Why We Write

Conversations with African Canadian Poets and Novelists

Edited by H Nigel Thomas
Categories: Literary Collections
Publisher: Mawenzi House
Paperback : 9781894770347, 244 pages, January 2006

Description

In this volume of interviews with H Nigel Thomas, fifteen leading African Canadian writers discuss the complexities of the writing experience and reveal their thoughts on their creative process. Identifying how their social and geographical origins have influences their work, these poets and fiction writers also respond to the exigencies of craft, the manipulation of publishers, the criticism of readers, and the absence of a clearly identifiable market for their works. This book, therefore, provides valuable insights both on individual creativity and on the politics of cultural production in a multicultural society.

Includes interviews with:
Ayanna Black, Austin Clarke, George Elliot Clarke, Wayde Compton, Afua Cooper, Bernadette Dyer, Cecil Foster, Claire Harris, Lawrence Hill, Nalo Hopkinson, Suzette Mayr, Pamela Mordecai, M NourbeSe Philip, Althea Prince, and Robert Sandiford.

Reviews

"Indispensable . . . Overall there is a sense in which the writers interviewed in this collection know they are contributing to an absolutely necessary project guaranteed to aid future writers and readers, with its discussions of the political and literary contexts, as well as formal and aesthetic aspects, of current Black Canadian writing." --The University of Toronto Quarterly