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Woodstock childhood helps inspire acclaimed short-story writer

MARIA TOEWS
Sentinel-Review
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Acclaimed Canadian author Dorothy Speaks has fond memories of her time growing up in Woodstock.

Speaks, who recently published her fourth volume of short stories, came to the Friendly City when she was only two months old and lived here until she moved away at age 19.

“I remember Woodstock very fondly,” she said in a Thursday interview. “It was a very safe place to grow up.”

She remembered English being her favourite subject in school while the experiences she had in the then-smaller town of Woodstock provided ample fodder for her later creative life.

“Small towns are very much a cross-section of humanity. I’ve lived in Ottawa now for 40 years. Everything you find here in Ottawa in terms of human nature, you saw in Woodstock, so it was a very good grounding,” she said about the inspiration for her short stories later in life.

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She said her love of writing was very much inspired by her parents during their years in Woodstock.

“My parents were very important to me. Many years ago, I would have said that Alice Munro – one of Canada’s biggest short story writers – was my main influence but, on reflection, I would probably say that my parents were the biggest influence on my work,” she said.

The fifth of seven children, Speaks said her childhood had an enormously positive impact on her writing, despite her family suffering some financial struggles while she was growing up.

“It made me value family life over money and success. You know, simple values … hard work, doing your best, treating everyone the same, that kind of thing.”

The values that her parents taught her continue to impact her stories to this day, as well as her work ethic.

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“Short story writers are under a lot of pressure. It’s not easy,” she said.

She published her first book of short stories, The Reflection of the Moon, in 1990. Despite penning one novel, short stories continue to be her favourite form of prose.

“I think that the short stories are more reflective of what real life is like. Life is episodic; it comes in short bursts. … Working with short stories is very different to working with the novel. I would compare it to working with clay.

“It’s a very organic form where you have to go by feel, whereas, when I was writing my novel, it became very quickly where I had to build a very strong structure like something made of timber, the framework of a house to hold this longer story and this bigger trajectory.”

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Pseudo, her newest book, was published three months ago. It’s another collection of short stories that was inspired by conflicts and issues she saw, as well as predicaments that people she knows have found themselves in.

“The important themes that I’ve always dealt with have been loss, betrayal, regret and redemption, and I think that each of my stories in this collection ends on an up note.”

While it took her two years to write her novel, she said it can take her six to eight years to write her short story collections “simply because every story is a new set of characters, a new world, a new stage and a new conflict so it takes time to develop that.

“I enjoy that challenge. … I really value the short story because it’s powerful, it has a real punch, it’s intense and it’s hard to write,” Speaks said.

“I want (readers) to have a really powerful emotional connection to my characters and to my protagonist. That is my biggest goal – to get (them) really, really deeply into the feelings of my characters and to have my readers have a really powerful connection to them.”

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