Books(in140) & Other Things

This week’s Twitter interview was with Toronto-based writer Dani Couture. Dani is a jill-of-all-trades, if you will and is currently working on a short story collection, a poetry collection and a novel! When she’s not writing, she is co-editor of Northern Poetry Review, the Youth Event Curator for The Scream Literary Festival, and working on her project, Animal Effigy.

I get dizzy just thinking about it!

Dani is also the author of Good Meat, a 2006 poetry collection that revolves around food and our relationship with it!

Be sure to read her blog and follow her on Twitter @danicouture!

Hi Dani! Ready for this? I’m DM you a Q & you respond when you can! Tell me about what you’ve been working on lately!

Hi, Erin! I’m finishing edits on a second collection of poetry, working on a novel, and working on a short story, The Mechanical Baby.

Sounds busy! Tell me about the novel!

The working title is Black Bear on Water. It’s a story about two brothers, a winter tragedy, the peculiar way the oldest chooses to cope.

Sounds interesting! You write in so many different styles. What’s writing a novel like compared to your short stories and poetry?

I need more time & space to work on fiction. A poem is easily portable. I can pull a paper out of my bag, work on it while on the streetcar.

Tell me about the new poetry collection!

Personally, it’s been a difficult collection to work on. The manuscript hardly resembles what it looked like only six months ago.

Now I have to ask you about the short story! It’s only fair!

The genesis: A surly teen awkwardly holding one of those class-issued mechanical babies outside of Spadina Station.

I like it! also, what an amazing day today! So, tell me what inspired your book GOOD MEAT. I love the concept!

Many of the poems in Good Meat are about my (complicated) relationship with the things I eat, how food can both nourish and host disease.

Where did such a neat & original idea for a collection come from?

Maybe I’m just lazy. Only interested in the things that are closest to me, what’s in my cupboards, my fridge, my stomach.

Haha! That’s a great answer! So, with so many projects on the go, what’s your work/writing schedule like?

The “schedule” manifests itself as loose papers everywhere, pockets full of notes, the computer always on, piles of books beside my bed.

You have a blog and are active on Twitter. As a writer, how & why do you use social media and have you found it useful?

I find social networking tools useful on a personal level. My friends & family are scattered across the country, the globe. Easy to connect.

What about professionally?

You can listen, contribute, watch. Stumble upon interesting people. Converse with other writers who you would have not have otherwise met.

How/why did you become a writer?!

When I was 7, buying books en masse at yardsales, I wanted to be Stephen King. Now, at 30, it’s a compulsion. To write, that is. Not be SK.

Thanks Dani! your answers were awesome!

No, that was great. Thanks, Erin! Great concept!

Good Meat is available through Amazon.ca for $14.60. Be sure to follow Dani for up-to-date info about her new projects!

Image of author reading at Exile Quarterly Launch, Toronto, Ontario in March 2008. Photo by Julie Wilson.