Rob Taylor interviews Jen Sookfong Lee
Photo: Sherri Koop
After writing eight books of fiction and non-fiction, Jen Sookfong Lee is about to publish her first poetry collection:
Lee’s books include
The Conjoined, nominated for International Dublin Literary Award and a finalist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize,
The Better Mother, a finalist for the City of Vancouver Book Award,
The End of East,
Gentlemen of the Shade, and
Chinese New Year. She was born and raised in Vancouver’s East Side, and she now lives with her son in North Burnaby.
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Rob Taylor interviews Jen Sookfong Lee
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Muse
Vancouver-based writer Mary Novik’s first novel,
Conceit, was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2007 and won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize in 2008. Muse is Novik’s second novel, and is set deep in history, both in time and detail. Novik weaves the story of fictitious protagonist, Solange, a spunky redheaded seer, into events of fourteenth-century Avignon including the historic personalities of the time: the poet Petrarch, his brother Gherardo, and Pope Clement VI.
From the beginning I was hooked: “I first hear my mother’s heartbeat from inside her dark surrounding womb.” This powerful image was followed by one of Solange’s defining visions. She could recall what we can’t, or shouldn’t; the depths of the past, the images of one’s future. “His face was as clear to me as the blood vessels inside her womb, his skin foxed with a tracery of veins I looked straight into his eyes and they were as hard and blue as lapis lazuli” (page 3). With this r