Literary Sewing Circle: Author Feature!

Today is the day we get to learn more about our author! Riel Nason is a Canadian author and textile artist/quilter.  She writes for both adults and children.  She is best known for her debut novel, The Town That Drowned,  which won the Commonwealth Book Prize for Canada and Europe among other awards, and her bestselling picture book series starring The Little Ghost Quilt. She lives in Quispamsis, New Brunswick. Nason is also a textile artist (quilter) and has had several exhibits of her original work as well as writing two nonfiction books on the topic.

We are so fortunate that Riel was available and willing to give us an interview on her writing for our Literary Sewing Circle! 

1. Welcome, Riel, and thank you for taking the time to do this interview for the Literary Sewing Circle! 

Thanks for having me here!

2. Can you tell us a bit about how you came to write All the Things We Leave Behind? What was the genesis of this story? The setting of All the Things We Leave Behind is so strong; readers can feel the forest (and its animal residents) and the river almost as characters themselves. Why did you choose this setting, and also the decade of the 70s, for this story? 

This novel was the follow-up after my debut The Town That Drowned. I knew I wanted to write another story set in the same New Brunswick region, with the fictionalized main event of TTTD now ten years in the past. (The event was the permanent flooding of the St. John River Valley due to the building of a hydro-electric dam, which completely changed the landscape of the area.)  In ATTWLB the story is largely centered at a roadside antique shop with an endless forest behind it, which characters find many reasons to visit. I love the forest and I grew up in rural NB with a forest as my backyard.  But as lovely as the forest can be, it can also be very dangerous.

3. Violet's voice is compelling as the main character and narrator, and her close relationship with her brother Bliss while he struggles is a strong thread of this story. Her parents are absent for much of the book, leaving her to manage on her own, but despite this, the theme of family and connection is so important to the book. How did you balance all of these elements?

I really can't put much description as to how I figure out what to emphasize where/when or what a story needs at any point.  I certainly have a huge awareness of how it is all coming together though.  When it comes to characters I am constantly thinking about the subtle combination of what would really, truly happen in this situation, with what needs to happen to advance the plot.  I often hear other authors say something like "I just create the characters and follow along to record all the surprising things they do." That is very, very far from what happens for me.

4. How did you decide to include the hard topics that you explore in this story? There is a thread of loss that runs through this book, from the Boneyard to the Vaughn estate to the reflections on the lost town of Haventon from your first novel. But there is also light, and connection, and just daily life that keeps going on. Do you find it difficult to fold this all in together? I'm wondering, because I felt it was so effective throughout the book.  

I think I'll answer about the "hard topics" here, a big one of which is mental illness. The character of Bliss really struggles in the novel.  As an author I write fiction, but fiction still has to be "true" -- in that there are some big topics that you don't want to guess at, or kind of try to figure out as you go. Mental illness can be just too devastating and overwhelming and perhaps impossible for a person to understand when looking from the  outside-in rather than the inside-out. So anyway, I have OCD and have had it for most of my life.  As an author I follow the write-what-you-know path. I am absolutely not the character of Bliss, but I do have a proper lens to look at him through.

5. As someone who is involved in sewing and textile arts yourself, do you see a connection between the making involved in textiles and in writing? Do they inform one another for you? If so, how?  

They are both creative pursuits that involve elements of fun and frustration for me.  But I definitely use the backspace key and delete things more than I use my seam ripper.  As to one informing the other, it's fun to put "quilting" into my stories. In my middle-grade novel Waiting Under Water one character is a textile artist/quilter.  And it was especially fun to turn a quilt into a main character in my picture book The Little Ghost Who Was A Quilt.

6. I know that like the readers in the Literary Sewing Circle, you are also a sewist, particularly in your work with quilting. What are some of your favourite creations, and where can people find out more about your creative pursuits?  

My favourites are always changing.  But lately I've had a lot of fun making small bags and other small accessories.  I sometimes post things I'm making/have made on Instagram @rielnason

7. Are you working on anything else that you'd like to share right now?

My next book comes out in August. It is the second in The Little Ghost Quilt series called The Little Ghost Quilt's Winter Surprise. Then the third in the series should be out late next year.

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I hope you are enjoying All the Things We Leave Behind so far! Please leave any thoughts on your reading or this interview here. You can also find more about Riel at her Instagram.