Nov 17, 2000
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THE UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA Nov 17, 2000 |
 Despite the recognition, UVic’s Alan Wilson says he won’t give up his day job
“Fiction is very different from poetry. Nobody, or almost nobody, reads poetry. So to have a book that people are actually reading is nice.” by Miguel Strother Alan Wilson, a poet who came to write fiction by accident, is co-winner of this year’s Chapters Books First Novel Award for Before the Flood, a book about modern changes in a small New Brunswick town. Wilson, like many Canadian writers, doesn’t live the flamboyant life of wealth and high society that is often associated with American novelists like Anne Rice and John Grisham. Rather, he works a full-time job to support his interest in writing. “Everybody needs to have a job,” says Wilson, who is an analyst/statistician in UVic’s department of institutional analysis. “Would I like to be able to write full-time? Well, everybody has their fantasies. If the state decided to give a full-time wage to novelists I’d think about writing full-time, but until then I’ll keep working.” It took Wilson 10 years of Sundays, the only day of the week he writes, to pry himself away from poetry efforts and complete the novel. “I published two books of poetry, Animate Objects and Counting to 100, before the novel finally evolved into what it is,” he says. “Fiction is very different from poetry. Nobody, or almost nobody, reads poetry. So to have a book that people are actually reading is nice.” According to Wilson, Before the Flood was an accident that started as an autobiographical piece for a non-fiction course required to complete his MFA in writing. “At the beginning of the book I had no idea about what I was doing,” says Wilson. “I was just experimenting. I tried writing a memoir about life as a kid in New Brunswick and it worked out better than I thought. Then I wrote another one that worked out too.” Soon the book became fictionalized, and Wilson began “allowing imagination equal time with memory.” In addition to the Chapters prize, Before the Flood was nominated for the Stephen Leacock Medal and the B.C. Book Prize for fiction. While Wilson knew that he would be hard-pressed to win those awards he was confident in his chances at the Chapters award. “I had a couple of hints that I had a good shot at it,” he says. “When I found out that Alistair MacLeod, such a high-profile author, was on the list I was a bit concerned. But I’m happy I crossed the finish line first.” For his efforts, Wilson takes home $5,000 dollars. |