Tag Archives: Sarah Klassen

History Cram

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I arrived in Winnipeg yesterday evening under a huge dark cloud that loosed a bit of rain, but not much of it apparently, despite how menacing it looked.

My friend Bonnie, where I’m staying, surprised me with a delicious supper of pickerel. My favourite fish!

Today was the first day of the conference The Russlaender Mennonites: War, Dislocation, and New Beginnings, part of a larger commemoration of the arrival in Canada of the first Mennonites of the 1920s migration (some 20,000) from Russia. (Hence Russlaender.) It was crammed full of history papers — 14 presentations in all! These are a-swirl in my brain and I’m too tired to sort them out. I may share some bits at some point, but not tonight.

What I enjoyed most were the interviews IMG_2426with two writers of literary books about the Russian Mennonite experience that bookended the day: Sarah Klassen with her recent The Russian Daughter and Sandra Birdsell with The Russlaender. I think it brilliant to feature literature together with history. (David Bergen will be up tomorrow with his new book set in that experience.)

Sarah Klassen
Sandra Birdsell (l) with Sarah Ens

“Put together”: A conversation with poet Sarah Klassen

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Sarah Klassen is a Winnipeg writer, author of eight books of poetry as well as two short story collections and a novel. Her work has won numerous awards, including the Gerald Lampert Award for poetry. She’s also a long-time friend.

The launch of her new book had to be virtual on account of the coronavirus, which also meant I could attend, in spite of now living several provinces apart. And I’m honoured to be a stop on her subsequent “blog tour” with the following conversation we had via Messenger. Continue reading →

Narratives of place

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H. and I took a short road trip through parts of the Dakotas, Wyoming, and Montana recently, in connection with my participation at the Billings (MT) Bookfest and the High Plains Fiction Awards on Oct. 25-6.

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near Thermopolis, WY

We enjoyed it. We were impressed by how dramatically terrain can shift in a matter of hours (we covered more than 4000 kilometers) and how much of what we passed was interesting or wondrous in some way. Okay, there were a few patches — in  Wyoming — almost too desolate-looking for words, but I was reading Annie Proulx’s Close Range: Wyoming Stories – a collection I highly recommend – and for that, the patches were perfectly necessary. For the connection between place and art, I mean, which is what this post is sort of about. Continue reading →