From the Author
Q&A with Claudia Dey
This is your first foray into fiction. How did you come up
with the idea for this work?
Stunt began with an image of a girl tightrope-walking
above Kensington Market. I lived near the market and for a few
years, walked through it every morning on my way to the Factory
Theatre where I had a small office for writing. The image of the
girl on the rope persisted and became the point of departure for
the book.
What was the creative process like for you?
It took five years.
I often felt like the only waitress in a very busy restaurant where
every customer had a different need - dessert, menu, bill, water,
high chair. It was an enormous amount of information to balance in
the brain. A constant chatter, every surface of the world became
one for scribbling stray notes. I imagine that this is what it is
to be haunted - or a lunatic.
From draft to draft, the process alternated between rapture and
drudgery; you are the pioneer discovering land for the first time,
and then you are the meticulous draftsperson mapping this
discovery. I am still astonished by the amount of time the book
required and the focus. I worked with a monk-like devotion and
forgot the rules of civility; I had to check that I was dressed
whenever I left the house.
Who did you read as a kid, and how did these first forays
into reading fiction affect your sensibilities as a
writer?
My father read the Narnia series aloud to my sister and I at
bedtime. It purported other possible universes; this lateral
thinking was very appealing to me. It told me that the world had a
false bottom - that behind one door might be another door, and
behind it, unnamed treasures and threats. The Brothers Grimm's
classic fairy tales had a macabre quality that I loved. Dr. Seuss
and Dennis Lee taught me that language can be so playful as to be
re-invented; there are no rules to story telling other than the
ones you declare.
What are you reading right now?
The New Yorker, Carl Wilson's Let's Talk About
Love, and a collection of short stories by Aimee Bender. I
just finished Michael Winter's The Architects are Here; it
was boisterous and incandescent, the prose lightning-fast and
assured. I would be remiss if I did not mention Anna
Karenina. Though I read it two summers ago, I am still reading
it - or being read by it - in that it continues to be present in my
mind. Tolstoy wrote our interiors with such deftness and
specificity that I came to believe we could understand each other
profoundly if we wished. Through this form, we could uncover our
essential humanity.
How and where do you write?
In the morning, uninterrupted, in a third floor office in my home.
Do you write with a certain audience in mind? Who is your
"ideal reader"?
A leftover of my theatre training, I still imagine bodies in red
velvet chairs filling a darkened hall. I am not entirely sure who
they are, but they are willing to be still and to pay attention.
Name one person in your life who profoundly influenced your
work, and why did you choose this person?
Gwendolyn MacEwen. Her work could never be confused for another's;
her voice was so distinct. She excavated ancient cultures and chose
extraordinary twins for her verse - T.E. Lawrence, the Loch Ness
monster, escape artists, Grey Owl. Her curiosity was untameable.
She was a sensualist, a scholar, and as far as creatures of the
mind investigating what it is to be human, an unmatched daredevil.
Who is your favourite protagonist in a work of fiction or
poetry, and why?
This is a musical, albeit poetic choice: any construction of David
Bowie's. His blue eye shadow, his high heels, his bad teeth, his
excellent suits. He is androgynous and otherworldly; his capacity
for transformation is limitless.
In your own work, which character are you most attached to,
and why?
Eugenia Stunt Ledoux of Stunt because she is able to
alchemize her grief into a form of daring.
Tell us a little about the overarching theme of your work,
and why you felt compelled to explore it.
I am fascinated by questions of belonging. How do we define
ourselves when the obvious markers of identity are gone? Are we
alone in this world or are we twins, who upon finding each other,
complete puzzles?