Check out this list of superstar writers: Atwood, Richler, Roy, Vanderhaeghe, Crozier, Bouchard, Laurence, Lowry, Berton, MacLennan, Leacock. There could be more, a comprehensive index of Can-lit greats. Now add a new name. A Prince George name.
Sarah de Leeuw has done what few writers, let alone northern B.C. writers, has ever attained. She is a finalist for a Governor General's Literary Award.
The book with which she achieved this rare and auspicious distinction is called Where It Hurts, a collection of creative non-fiction essays themed on the notion of loss and set entirely in the many northern British Columbia locations where de Leeuw has lived and worked.
Only one other Prince George resident has ever been nominated for a Governor General's Literary Award - affectionately known in Canadian writer's circles as the GG - that being poet Barry McKinnon, although other local writers have been nominated while living elsewhere.
"Yeah... Yeah...," de Leeuw started, then paused. "It was pretty overwhelming, in a spectacular way," she added, struggling for words to express her associated emotions.
She found out about the nomination in bleary-eyed, broadside fashion.
"I usually get up somewhere around 5:40 or 5:45 in the morning," the UNBC professor said. "My partner (artist and academic Briar Craig) does not. And the first thing I usually do is check my phone for messages and go through my emails. So I picked up my phone. The lighting is poor. My eyes haven't adjusted. And you know how your Twitter feed is on top of your screen?, it's just always there? Well I never have anything on my feed. I hardly ever tweety or twitty or whatever they call it, but holy wow, that morning my screen was just going ballistic. I finally got the thing into focus and it hit me, what was being said. I started shouting 'Briar! Briar! Briar!' The cats all went scattering. I just kept thinking never, ever, in my wildest dreams did I think I would ever see a book of mine get an acclamation like that."
Some awards require the knowledge of the author or publisher in order to be eligible. The GG does not. Making this shortlist came as a complete shock to her and an equal surprise to her publisher, NeWest Press.
"This is a very unlikely finalist," de Leeuw said. "The nominees are usually much more substantial books, in terms of size. A slim collection of essays isn't the typical nominee, so in that way they have honoured the book all the more."
Rarer still is the subject matter on the nominees' list. The northern B.C. localities makes this burst of attention a deeper form of satisfaction for de Leeuw. It spreads the message of this place via the stories in Where It Hurts.
In her experiences, which have included widespread travel, she has detected a disdain for Prince George among urban/southern Canadians. She has also lived through the disdain of place among the peers she grew up with in tiny northern communities and couldn't wait to depart, almost like escaping their birth region as though it were a prison.
Juxtaposed to that is all her lifelong northern experiences that have informed, inspired and edified her own life, made possible by the region she's always called home. She was raised in places like Haida Gwaii and Terrace before settling in Prince George out of sheer choice (she currently splits her P.G. time with Kelowna due to professional reasons).
The content of Where It Hurts is partially rooted in a desire to show the real north, the authentic north, with all its natural nuance and galvanizing community.
"Writing about northern, rural and marginalized geographies should matter to Canadians," she said. "Notwithstanding class divisions and ethnic divisions, there are also the divisions between those in Canada who live within 150 kilometres of the American border and those of us who live north of that."
She doesn't lobby for a formal cause, in her writing, but she admits she does feel compelled to represent a raw, illuminating sense of this place.
"I think a lot of artists, not just writers, think that any sense of capital-P politics getting mixed up in their work should be avoided, that it will taint the art, or veer into propaganda of some kind. That the maker of that art needs to be neutral. I agree that art should not be based on single-minded views; I do not agree at all that we as artists should be striving for neutrality. I don't think I should be neutral about Donald Trump. I shouldn't be neutral on missing and murdered indigenous women. I'm not going to be neutral about the way northern and rural communities are dismissed by southern urban ones. I'm not on some kind of mission, but I am intentional with my writing."
There are eight categories of writing that the Governor General honours annually (times two, as one trophy is awarded for English and another for French). Where It Hurts is nominated in the non-fiction column, up against books from bigger names like Graeme Wood, Carol Off, Elaine Dewar and Sharon Butala. It is company that makes de Leeuw blush.
"The GG is the pinnacle compliment in Canadian writing. Full stop," she said, still a little breathless at the thought.
"To be perfectly frank, when I write my stuff I have no thought as to where it might end up. I'm not even sure I'll even find a publisher for whatever I'm working on. That makes it impossible to project ahead to thoughts like 'and then I'll get a GG nomination.' That can't even cross my mind, that's so far down the line of circumstances beyond my control, so this news is just ridiculous in my own mind, in a wonderful sense of the word. I just love the mechanics of writing. It brings me joy, fulfillment. Part of the lesson here for me is to always write with no expectation that it will ever be seen by anyone, and write to the best of your abilities. What has to be at the fore is the love of writing, the love of doing the work, and self-insisting on quality."
By profession, de Leeuw is an associate professor for the Northern Medical Program and the National Collaborating Centre for Aboriginal Health at UNBC. Prior to Where It Hurts, she is also the author of Unmarked: Landscapes Along Highway 16 (2004), Frontlines: Portraits of Caregivers in Northern British Columbia (2011), Geographies Of A Lover (2012), and Skeena (2015). Some are non-fiction works, some are poetry.
Additionally, her expanded creative non-fiction articles Columbus Burning (2009) and Quick-quick. Slow. Slow (2010) were each nominated for a CBC Literary Award while Geographies Of A Lover won the 2013 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize for the best book of poetry in B.C. that year.
This year's GG winners will be named next week.
