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Winnipeg Free Press
3 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
Fantasy-adjacent historical fiction finds fans worldwide
It's difficult to neatly categorize Guy Gavriel Kay's published work of the last 35 years — and that's just the way he likes it. The Saskatchewan-born, Winnipeg-raised Kay, now 70, was studying at the University of Manitoba when he was enlisted by J.R.R. Tolkien's son Christopher to help edit his late father's unpublished work, The Silmarillion, in Oxford, England. After returning to Canada and completing his law degree in Toronto, Kay set about writing fantasy of his own, beginning with the three books in The Fionavar Tapestry. But since his breakout 1990 novel Tigana, set in a world similar to Renaissance Italy, Kay's writing has moved away from deep fantasy, treading a fine line between fantasy and historical fiction, inspired by real-life events in history but with a certain mystical element underlying his novels. 'I write about the past — I do that quarter-turn to the fantastic, but essentially, I'm writing about moments in history that seem to me powerful and resonant for today,' says Kay, who will launch his latest novel, Written on the Dark, at McNally Robinson Booksellers' Grant Park, where he will be joined in conversation by Bruce Symaka. Written on the Dark follows the exploits of Thierry Villar, a tavern poet in the town of Orane (a stand-in for Paris) in medieval France, who becomes embroiled in the machinations of local politics, war and an investigation into the murder of one of the local dukes, the king's brother. Kay took inspiration from real-life poet François Villon and the assassination of the Duc d'Orleans in Paris during the Hundred Years' War. Avoiding straight historical fiction has allowed Kay to explore themes that continue to resonate today without being hemmed in by the hard facts of what happened at the time. 'History rhymes for me, and it underlies my entire literary method, which is that I'm not trying to pretend I know the thoughts and feelings of real people — I'm fine with other people doing that,' he says. 'I'm happier with that quarter-turn so that my protagonists and the secondary characters are clearly identified as inspired by real people, but not equivalent to them.' Kay's body of work continues to be widely read; his books have translated into dozens of languages, with the bulk of his novels still in print. Tigana and his 1995 novel The Lions of Al-Rassan, set in a world similar to medieval Spain, have both enjoyed a particular uptick in popularity in recent years thanks to BookTok, the TikTok sub-community that posts reviews and thoughts about books, and where fantasy novels remain incredibly popular. 'I've been given a gift by readers around the world. I don't sell on the order of people who've had movies and television series made of their books, because I don't write those kinds of books, but by great good fortune, I sell well, and I sell around the world, and the books stay in print around the world,' Kay says. Among Kay's recent global accomplishments are the recent release of Tigana in Taiwan, for which he wrote a new introduction, and some of his books having been published in Ukrainian in the last 18 months, with two more in the works. He admits to being moved by the fact that not only is the war-torn country still publishing and reading books, but that his are among them. 'In a war zone, in a country afflicted the way it is, especially as I get older, that sort of thing really gets to me,' he says. Every Second Friday The latest on food and drink in Winnipeg and beyond from arts writers Ben Sigurdson and Eva Wasney. Kay recognizes one of the keys to success is recognizing who can help you get your art into the world, acknowledging that doing book tours and interviews in advance of a new work's release is all part of the business of writing. 'All artists need a patron — whether it was the Borgias or Medicis or the pope in the Renaissance, or the Chinese emperor in the Tang Dynasty, or McNally Robinson stocking you at the front of the store, or the Canada Council supporting you if you're a poet, he says. 'Artists have always needed to find a way to appeal to those who can let them make a living, let them make their art.' @bensigurdson Ben SigurdsonLiterary editor, drinks writer Ben Sigurdson is the Free Press's literary editor and drinks writer. He graduated with a master of arts degree in English from the University of Manitoba in 2005, the same year he began writing Uncorked, the weekly Free Press drinks column. He joined the Free Press full time in 2013 as a copy editor before being appointed literary editor in 2014. Read more about Ben. In addition to providing opinions and analysis on wine and drinks, Ben oversees a team of freelance book reviewers and produces content for the arts and life section, all of which is reviewed by the Free Press's editing team before being posted online or published in print. It's part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
Winnipeg Free Press
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
‘Curious kind of communion'
To recruit vocalists for her interspecies choir, Jami Reimer slipped on a pair of hip waders and eased into the swampy waters of Brazil's Atlantic Forest. Clutching three microphones and a flashlight, the bioacoustic artist masqueraded as a talent scout, eavesdropping on the 'erotic refrain' of an amphibian mating chorus. What she heard changed the way she understood the possibilities of sound and the responsibilities of recording it. SUPPLIED Jami Reimer's Soft Tongues features her amphibian recordings in Brazil mixed with her own voice and archived recordings of extinct frog species. In Soft Tongues, Reimer's upcoming performance piece at the Cluster Festival of New Music and Integrated Arts, the humming, croaking and hammering rhythms her recording devices captured mesh with her own voice, along with archived recordings of extinct frog species dating to 1950. Though the languages differed, the Winnipeg-raised Reimer was reminded by the warty chorus of formative experiences in Mennonite church choirs, where vocalization patterns are handed down between generations as acts of communal perseverance. 'In field-recording practices, you don't get to access connection unless you know when to quiet your own voice and become available as a listener,' says Reimer, who embedded with the University of Campinas' Amphibian Natural History lab to collect her earliest samples of frogsong. 'These choruses are imprints of how a habitat is doing. They sound out the health of a wetland.' While completing her MFA at Simon Fraser University, Reimer, who still lives in Vancouver, was inspired to explore bioacoustics — the study of animal communication through sound — by her ecologist sister, whose ornithological research project coincided with an amphibian chorus event. 'I was pretty captivated how the same recording technologies used in music were being used to interface with other species,' says Reimer, who sang with Camerata Nova and in various choirs during her undergraduate studies at Canadian Mennonite University. An obsession with amphibian soundscapes developed, informing Soft Tongues, which Reimer describes as 'a bioacoustic opera,' that fulfils a craving for collective vocalization, a practice the artist says serves as both a physical and spiritual reminder of interconnectivity. SUPPLIED photos Jami Reimer's Soft Tongues will be performed at the Cluster Festival. Reimer will perform Soft Tongues on June 6 at the West End Cultural Centre as part of Cluster's Oscillations program, a double concert also featuring Dirge, a collaboration between Franco-Manitoban beatmaker Rayannah, Chilean psych-rocker Los Dias Floreados and contemporary dancer Carol-Ann Bohrn. 'Field recording has really taught me how to quiet myself and become available to another species I will never understand, listening to it the way I would engage with music,' says Reimer, who will also perform a set of original music at Public Domain on June 14, opening with Toronto's Avalon Tassonyi for Winnipeg's Virgo Rising. 'It's a curious kind of communion.' While Reimer's choral project centres on living harmonies, Eliot Britton and Patrick Hart's new work for Cluster is built around an impersonal voice that satirizes the growing influence of artificial intelligence and large language models as a replacement for genuine human interaction. 'Powered by relentlessly enthusiastic algorithms,' the Quigital Corporate Retreat (June 10 at the WECC) invites audience members to dress in their drabbest business-casual attire for a series of 'product launches, corporate loyalty tests and passive-aggressive email lounge ballads.' It's all made up, but as a corporate collective, Quigital's overlords hope its work inspires laughter as much as it provokes tech-driven anxiety in a 'digital panic room' of their own design. Though neither the Winnipeg-born Britton, a co-director of Cluster and a professor in the University of Toronto's Faculty of Music, nor Hart, who has scored commercials for McDonalds, Microsoft and Old Navy, has seen the series, their acquaintances have frequently compared the ongoing Quigital project to the TV series Severance, the Emmy-winning series that skewers office-culture soullessness and technocratic overreach. Like Lumon, Severance's pseudo-religious, cult-like corporation driven by split personality, Quigital is both ambiguous and pointed. 'We strive to do the same thing, where Quigital is both our star and our villain, but the most sympathetic, wonderful, appealing villain,' says Britton. Earlier projects by the collective include the fake launch, in 2020, of a series of home security devices powered by AI. 'Each product was designed to be incredibly appealing, which also makes them incredibly menacing,' says Britton. 'There's then this hilarious, awkward tension that emerges,' adds Hart. That aura permeates the group's upcoming retreat, where vocalist Sara Albu and the Montreal-based Architek Percussion will use improvised sound, automated language and looping, robotic delivery to simultaneously mock the AI movement while also admitting humanity's initial defeat. SUPPLIED Jami Reimer performing. 'It's a comedy of modern life that everyone very intuitively understands,' says Hart. The Cluster Festival, founded in 2009, runs from June 3-10. A full schedule is available at Full festival passes cost $60. Ben WaldmanReporter Ben Waldman is a National Newspaper Award-nominated reporter on the Arts & Life desk at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg, Ben completed three internships with the Free Press while earning his degree at Ryerson University's (now Toronto Metropolitan University's) School of Journalism before joining the newsroom full-time in 2019. Read more about Ben. Every piece of reporting Ben produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
