Cover to cover: Giller Prize winner talks writing

After graduating, Skibsrud shelved The Sentimentalists to pursue projects that included teaching in South Korea and working in the publishing industry in Toronto.

Her first book in print was a poetry collection, called Late Nights with Wild Cowboys (Gaspereau Press, 2008).

Thanks to some inspiring literature classes at Concordia, it wasn’t long before Skibsrud was ready to head back to school. She enrolled in an English literature PhD program at Université de Montréal, which she completed in 2012 — a stint that included nine months in Paris.

During her doctoral studies she submitted The Sentimentalists to Gaspereau Press, a boutique publishing house located in Kentville, N.S, which had published her poetry collection.

“Gaspereau Press was extremely good to me,” says Skibsrud. Three of her five works were first printed with them. The Sentimentalists will be reissued by Penguin Group Canada in fall 2016.

Genres that suit different thoughts

Skibsrud maintains a busy schedule, working as an assistant professor at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Ariz., and spending summers in Cape Breton, N.S.

“I was a little skeptical about how successful I would be in dividing my time between research, teaching and my own creative writing,” says Skibsrud, who began instructing fulltime in 2013. Her courses are on 20th-century contemporary American literature — generally defined as post-Second World War writing.

“But I like that I can shift gears. I’ll be thinking about an academic piece, then — for example —be able to consider the same piece of writing from an entirely different angle in a poem,” says Skibsrud about her busy schedule, which includes caring for her two-year-old daughter.

The author says that sometimes she’ll begin in one genre — such as poetry — and find that output would fit better as an observation revealed by a character in a short story, or a novel.

“I like having a bunch of different projects at once,” says Skibsrud, who is working on her third novel and a collection of short stories.

Her advice to aspiring writers? “Read a lot and think about structure and ideas. Contemplate what you love in those readings and try to press the boundaries of what literature can do,” Skibsrud says.

She adds that some of her favourite books challenge reader expectations and what can be accomplished with words.

“Virginia Woolf’s Waves was one of those works,” says Skibsrud. She further lists Knut Hamsun’s Hunger and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick as important to her.

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