Marion Agnew

Last weekend I presented a workshop about choice in creative nonfiction. In nonfiction, you have a lot of opportunities to choose--for example, the form your work takes (whether in print, drama, sound, or some other medium), the type of research you pursue and select to include, and how personal or not you want your creative nonfiction to be. PLUS all the techniques of fiction are available to you--setting, plot, point of view. All you have to do is tell the truth, and be honest about times when you aren't sure. (Ha! That's "all.") In any case, I bombarded workshop participants with handouts and even forgot two, so I'm linking to them here. This one includes a couple of exercises we did in the workshop plus others. This one includes other resources--podcasts, organizations, publications, you name it. Neither is in any sense comprehensive--they're just places people can go to keep learning about creative nonfiction. Many thanks to the Northweste...

My author copies have arrived! Surely it will appear in stores soon. When it does, I'll share that information here and through other social media. I'm feeling lots of feels, as apparently one does when one's book appears in the world. Gratitude, mostly--for all the support along the way. Not only from friends, writer colleagues, and other individuals. Also, support from public funding through the Ontario Arts Council , and from the private company, Signature Editions , that is my publisher.* I'm also feeling hope. Hope that perhaps somewhere another daughter who wrestles with guilt and fear might find she's not alone, and that life after the most difficult transitions can bring gifts. * Just pointing out that Signature is also supported with public funding, as are all private companies that take advantages of "incentives" and "rebates" or information provided by governments, or perhaps use roads and public utilities, or whose owners e...

Last week was Thanksgiving! (In Canada.) Happy Thanksgiving! I made a pumpkin cake. It was fine. It was good! I mean, it tasted good. Looked okay, I guess. (Except I didn't think through the whole "dust with icing sugar" thing and cinnamon kind of gunked up my sifter, but that's a problem to be solved some other time.) It came out of the pan looking a bit fancy, as bundt cakes do. It was also relatively easy to produce. I'd make it again except that it's suddenly hard to find spice cake mixes on grocery store shelves (possibly because of the time of the year). I could also make a spice cake from scratch and add in the add-ins, but let's not get crazy. I took a picture of it (obviously) but decided not to post it on Instagram. It didn't really feel "Insta-worthy." And that led me to consider whether my tens of followers there would have really cared. It's the kind of thing you think about when you've been quietly working in...

As I mentioned in July , my essay collection is coming out this fall! The first copies of Reverberations: A Daughter's Meditations on Alzheimer's are due to arrive later this month. Here's the cover. That young woman is my mother, Jeanne Starrett LeCaine (later Agnew), in her days as a mathematics student. Kind people near and far have been helpful all along in making my semi-coherent thoughts into words into essays and now into a collection. I'm especially grateful to that apparently limitless font of encouragement and good judgment known as Susan Olding , author of the essay collection  Pathologies (and much more!). Many thanks also to Winnipeg's Signature Editions for plucking my manuscript from their slush pile and working diligently to slot it into this autumn's releases. It feels fitting that this book finds its place in the world at the harvest season, when the birch and mountain ash are especially golden and glorious. P.S. Part of me wo...

We certainly picked an excellent time of the year for a quick business trip to Duluth! See? That background shows the same lake I see every morning. The birches and poplars are beautiful here--golden and lovely, brilliant against the everygreens, as you see in the foreground. And yet, this is a different view, giving me a new perspective. I feel refreshed. I appreciate the beauty of this place all over again. I hope everyone has the chance to do something similar, from time to time. It's lovely to choose your life again, even when you think you already appreciate it. (Photo of Lake Superior from the lookout at Mt. Josephine, Grand Portage, Minnesota.)