Writer-in-residence available to coach

Laura Eggertson

Whenever Alan Cumyn begins a novel, there’s always a cheese sandwich hovering in the back of his brain. No, it’s not because pouring words onto the page makes the University of Ottawa’s new writer-in-residence ravenous. The image of the sandwich is one that mentor Alistair MacLeod planted the year he supervised Cumyn’s master’s project at the University of Windsor.

Cumyn met weekly with MacLeod and other students in the creative writing program to critique each other’s work. As MacLeod explained basic writing problems, his punchline was: “If you don’t do it well, then the reader will put down the book, go into the kitchen to get a cheese sandwich and never come back,” Cumyn remembers.

“Something as bland as a cheese sandwich is competition for bland writing,” Cumyn says. “You have to really grip the reader to the page. I’ve tried to do that in my writing ever since.”

Since Cumyn’s latest novel, The Famished Lover, has just been long-listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, it’s fair to say that he’s succeeded in capturing his readers’ interest. That approach to writing is one of the many benefits of experience that Cumyn is passing along to the University community during his tenure until the end of December.

“I definitely want to meet with students who are keen on writing, who have done their own creative writing and want some feedback,” he says.

Cumyn, who holds office hours on Mondays from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. and Thursdays from 10 a.m. until noon, will comment on up to 15 pages of a short story or chapter of fiction from students who submit their work to the English department office. He’s also speaking to some English classes and bringing in guest writers, beginning with Danielle Schaub, a specialist in Canadian literature, who teaches in Israel.

Great writing hardly ever springs to the page full-blown, says Cumyn. He believes the skills can be taught.

“You have to bring a real desire to it and it helps to have talent, but there are things you can learn,” Cumyn says. “There are certainly things you don’t have to invent for yourself.”

Canada produces a disproportionate number of interesting writers, in part because of our writing programs, says Cumyn, who counts the University’s English department among them. The uOttawa writers-in-residence, who have included such past luminaries as Carol Shields, provide important encouragement and inspiration.

Although Cumyn writes novels for adults as well as children, he is interested in all kinds of writing, a skill he stresses is an asset in many jobs. In the 1990s, he wrote reports on human rights issues for the Immigration and Refugee Board. He plans to bring report writers from Amnesty International to campus this term.

“I really appreciate how much research goes into that kind of writing and how difficult it is, because it has to be substantial enough to move governments, but readable by the general public.”

In other words, no reaching for the cheese sandwich allowed.

Alan Cumyn will be reading from The Famished Lover at the Nicholas Hoare bookshop’s Books and Brunch series on October 29.