Giller Prize Spotlight: Anne Fleming
September 14, 2024
Anne Fleming’s novel, Curiosities, has been longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize. Anne Fleming is the author of Pool-Hopping and Other Stories, shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize; and the novelĀ Anomaly, published to widespread acclaim. Her middle-grade novel,Ā The Goat, was a Junior Library Guild and White Ravens selection, shortlisted for Italy’s Premio Strega, optioned for film, and named one of the Top Ten Children’s Books of the Year by the New York Public Library andĀ The Wall Street Journal. Anne Fleming lives in Victoria, British Columbia.
What inspired you to write Curiosities?
I read a review of a book about the witch craze that said that one thing witches were believed capable of was āputting a glamourā on a manās penis to make it disappear. It seemed obvious to me that the men to whom that had happened hadnāt had penises in the first place.
What do you hope readers take away from Curiosities?
Humans are fallible and loveable.
Where is your favourite place to write and what is your process?
Not so much a favourite as a default: I write in my home office. For many years this was an appropriated hallway. Now I am fortunate to have an actual room, which doubles as a guest room.
My process? When Iām writing, which is not always ā I find it next to impossible to write fiction while teaching ā I approach it like a regular workday, that is, I play word games and check the news and tell myself not to check social media, then check social media to get my fill of weird medieval guys and absolute units of sheep and so on, then finally look at what I wrote yesterday to re-immerse myself in the world and the character. Sometimes I know what the next scene is and I can go ahead and write it. Sometimes I donāt so I back off and look at the big picture by sketching an outline, and then I write the scene. Itās a slow process.
Is there an activity you do to help inspire writing?
Going out into the world and noticing things.
Whatās a book you recommend others read and why?
Where Things Touch, A Meditation on Beauty, Bahar Orang. I picked up this book because Iām reading and thinking about beauty for a new project. Itās fragmentary and compelling, an address to a beloved, a musing on medical training, a consideration of film and poetry and painting, a diary of thought. I like what it tumbles together between its covers.