As I've mentioned on this blog, when I first read Alice Munro's Lives of Girls and Woman for the first time as a teen, I thought, This story is about me! So my story is worth writing about! After reading so many books that bore little relation to my life as a young Canadian woman, that was a revelation. That was my first step towards becoming a writer: the recognition that my own landscape and stories were worth writing about.

I was at Wordfest in Banff and Calgary this past week attending an event called "Wild Rose Alberta Bound." One of the presenters was Andrew Wedderburn who was there with his first novel and during his presentation he talked about exactly the same sort of moment of revelation when he read Robert Kroetsch. He said, "I got this rush of excitement that he used the more exciting parts of Alberta for the engine of his novel. That made me feel I could go out and write about my Alberta."

On Friday, October 19, just before my events at the Vancouver International Writers and Readers Festival, I gave a keynote lecture at the conference for BCTELA, the British Columbia Teachers of English Language Arts grades 4 thru 12. I talked about how I approach my own landscape, the Shuswap-Thompson, in my writing, as well as how I encourage my students at UBC to engage with their own landscapes and stories.

To that end, I sent out an email request to several of British Columbia's best writers for their suggestions on books by BC writers written about BC that might be appropriate for younger readers. Their book suggestions, listed below, are for various ages, both YA and children's, and many of their submissions gave reference to where the book is set. In no particular order, here are book suggestions for the younger set from Pearl Luke, Eden Robinson, Jen Sookfong Lee, June Hutton, Glen Huser, Mary Novik, Shaena Lambert and Jack Hodgins:

Obasan by Joy Kogawa
My Brother's Keeper by Marion Woodson (Cedar by the Sea)
Tale of a Great White Fish by Maggie De Vries
Under Emily's Sky by Ann Alma (a children's fiction book about Emily Carr)
Tin Angel by Shannon Cowan
Adrift by Julie Burtinshaw (Desolation Sound).
The Freedom of Jenny by Julie Burtinshaw (Saltspring Island)
The Boxcar Kid by Norma Charles (Fraser valley)
Odd Man Out by Sarah Ellis (West coast island)
Pick-Up Sticks by Sarah Ellis (Vancouver)
Flood by James Heneghan (Vancouver)
Payback by James Heneghan (North Vancouver)
Waiting for Sarah by James Heneghan (Vancouver)
Disconnected by Shelley Hrdlitschka
Tangled Web by Shelley Hrdlitschka (Vancouver)
The Lightkeeper's Daughter by Iain Lawrence (West Coast)
Cougar Cove by Julie Lawson (Vancouver Island)
White Jade Tiger by Julie Lawson (Victoria)
The Beckoners by Carrie Mac (Abbotsford)
The Greenies by Myra Paperny (Vancouver)
Awake and Dreaming by Kit Pearson (Vancouver and Victoria)
The Daring Game by Kit Pearson (Vancouver)
Haida Quest by Mary Razzell (Sunshine Coast)
Snow Apples by Mary Razzell (Rural west coast near Vancouver)
Monkey Beach by Eden Robinson (Kitimaat)
The Darwin Expedition by Diane Tullson (Whistler)
Breaking Smith's Quarterhorse by Paul St Pierre
Earle Birney's long poem "David" in David and Other Poems
The Cure for Death by Lightning by Gail Anderson-Dargatz (Shuswap-
Thompson)
Jen Sookfong Lee's The End of East (Vancouver)
Wayson Choy's A Jade Peony (Vancouver)
Timothy Taylor's Stanley Park (Vancouver)
Malcolm Lowry's "Forest Path to the Spring" (Deep Cove area of Vancouver)
Stories by Alice Munro, e.g. "The Office" (West Vancouver )
Poems set in BC by Al Purdy, Dorothy Livesay, Susan Musgrave, Kate Braid, Tom Wayman,
and George Bowering (also some of his prose).
Sheila Watson's Double Hook (near Ashcroft)
Gary Geddes' anthology called Skookum Wawa: Writings of the Canadian Northwest, Oxford
University Press, 1975. It includes work by 70 writers, including Al Purdy, Susan Musgrave,
Haig-Brown.
John Vaillant's The Golden Spruce
Terry Glavin's This Ragged Place
Roderick Haig-Brown: any one of his "Fisherman's season" books
Bus Mathews' Now You're Logging! (comic book style illustrated novel)
Hubert Evans's Mist on the River (Skeena area)
Ethel Wilson's Swamp Angel (Okanagan)
Paul St Pierre's collection of his Cariboo stories (Cariboo)
George Bowering's Burning Water (Vancouver Island coast, history)
Audrey Thomas's Intertidal (Gulf Islands)
Margaret Laurence's The Stone Angel (Vancouver)
Anne Cameron's Daughters of Copper Woman
Bill Gaston's Sointula (Vancouver Island)
Gail Anderson-Dargatz's A Recipe for Bees (Vancouver Island, Shuswap-
Thompson)
Timothy Taylor's Silent Cruise (Vancouver and Lower Mainland).
Barbara Lambert's A Message for Mr Lazarus (Okanagan, West Vancouver)
Bill Gaston's Gargoyles, Mount Appetite (Vancouver Island).
Madeline Thein's Simple Recipes (Vancouver's China Town).
Nancy Lee's Dead Girls (Downtown Eastside and environs).
Kevin Chong's Baroque-a-Nova (Tsawassen mostly).
Douglas Coupland's Girlfriend in a Coma (North Vancouver)
Lee Henderson's Broken Record Technique (some stories set in Vancouver).
Linda Svendsen's Marine Life (Vancouver)
Annabel Lyon's Oxygen and The Best Thing for You
Jack Hodgins's Broken Ground (Vancouver Island, history)
Shaena Lambert's Falling Woman
Andrea Macpherson's When She Was Electric (Nicola Valley and Merritt)
Glen Huser's Skinnybones and the Wrinkle Queen (Some scenes in Vancouver)
Diane Leger's Maxine's Tree (west coast-Carmanah)
Sylvia Olson stories based on reservations around BC
Dede Crane's The 25 pains of Kennedy Baines

Also, check out these on-line resources for more books by BC authors:

Children's Writers and Illustrator's of BC at: www.cwill.bc.ca/public/pages/links
ABC Bookworld site at: http://www.abcbookworld.com/
BC Federation of Writers site at: http://www.bcwriters.com/

The photos above are from my home region, the Shuswap-Thompson. Photo credit: Mitch Krupp, from his collection showing throughout October at the SAGA Public Gallery in Salmon Arm, BC.

Opening night for the joint gallery show I did with my husband Mitch Krupp called Turtle Valley: Memory and Magic was on Friday, October 5 at the SAGA Public Art Gallery in Salmon Arm. The show, which runs throughout the month of October, features Mitch's photos and text from my novels about the Shuswap-Thompson region in British Columbia.

Opening night was also my local book launch of Turtle Valley where family, friends and members of the community where I grew up came out to celebrate. So I signed plenty of copies of the novel that night. Mitch was very surprised to find folks wanted his signature on the novel too and at first declined, but I talked him into it, as his contributions to the novel changed it profoundly.


Mitch is responsible for those beautiful photographs of family objects that are featured at each chapter break in Turtle Valley. I knew from the start that family objects would play an important role in this novel (see my blog below called "Possessions that define us and remind us" for more on that). When I approached Mitch to take the photos, however, he was less than enthusiastic about the gig. "I don't do objects," he said. Mitch is a landscape photographer, and taking pictures of family heirlooms, evidently, was somewhat beneath him. "Don't be so damn precious," I said. He grumbled and realizing, as he put it, that he had little choice in the matter, he started taking the photos. Then, slowly, he got into it. The result was a series of intimate, nostalgic images of objects that are familiar to most of us (most of us over 40, at least).



We worked together for a year on those objects, choosing which to use, photographing them, finding the ones that actually worked, choosing more objects, retaking others. As Mitch took the photos, I told him the family stories that were attached to those objects, or talked about issues I was working through in the novel, and together we brainstormed on the problems, playing "what if." I found in those conversations solutions and more material to inspire me. Also, his choices over what objects actually worked as images changed many aspects of the novel, including plotlines, as I incorporated those objects into the text. There are many passages in Turtle Valley that simply would not have been written without his collaboration. One small example is the flour sifter passage that starts at the bottom of page 86.


So it was appropriate that Mitch should sign copies of Turtle Valley as well. He helped make the novel what it is. And I expect that opening night of our joint gallery show represents just the first of many creative collaborations to come.

You can listen to Mitch Krupp talk about his photography show and our collaborations on Daybreak South airing provincially on CBC Radio British Columbia on Thanksgiving Monday, October 8 at 6:45 a.m. PST. To listen to the show live from anywhere in Canada, go to the Daybreak South site at: http://www.cbc.ca/daybreaksouth/marionBarschel.html


In case it isn't evident, the ruggedly handsome guy in the flowered shirt is Mitch Krupp. Photo credit on all the images above from opening night: Jasper Krupp.