Krista Foss, a Berton House writer-in residence, treated locals to her presentation—The Outsider’s Guide to Being a Better Outsider—before bidding them farewell
Writers-in-residence at Berton House have only two responsibilities, aside from being inspired by the place. They are to do public readings in both Dawson City and Whitehorse at some point during the residency.
Author Krista Foss fulfilled that obligation in Dawson on Nov. 13, the evening before her departure.
The event was organized by Dätla Zho (the Dawson Community Library) and attended by about a dozen folks, most of whom Foss had gotten to know during her stay.
Foss was introduced by the acting librarian, Gaby Sgaga.
“She’s a novelist, essayist and a short-story writer; an avid lake swimmer, lazy gardener and a caffeine enthusiast. Her short fiction has appeared in several literary journals, including Granta, and has twice been a finalist for the Journey Prize. Her essay writing has been featured in Best Canadian Essays, nominated for a national magazine award and received a prize in the PRISM International Creative Non-Fiction Contest.
“She’s published two novels: Smoke River in 2014, and Half Life in 2021, both with McClelland & Stewart. Born and raised in Hamilton, she now lives in a small village north of Kingston, with less than half of Dawson’s population.”
Foss offered several options during her slightly more than an hour-long presentation, beginning with what she called an Outsider’s Guide to Being a Better Outsider, in Dawson, by an outsider.”
The 12 points
- Not taking bear-warning signs too seriously, but being cautious and hopeful
- Being a bit eccentric, as are some of the locals
- Enjoying the variety of displays and the shades of the day
- Watching some sports events (Blue Jays?), with locals in a bar
- Savouring the Hän words on many of the buildings and signs. And saying them aloud
- Being open to change: when your agent says the project you came here to write isn’t working, find another story
- Going berry picking and enjoying the scenery
- Accepting the sight of odd gear (boxer shorts?) at a pickleball game
- Saying yes to all of the epic adventures
- Listening to others’ stories instead of telling yours
- Embracing the ordinary, even if it’s not your ordinary
- Telling people how you were changed by this place, before you leave
In-between readings she reversed the usual order of events by asking the audience questions: What’s the best dog’s name in town? What song reminds you of Dawson? What’s the hardest part of Dawson in the winter? What’s the best wild game you’ve ever tasted?
That new story idea she had to come up with involves the tale of a man named Aubrey, an artist who moves back to Dawson after many years living in Montreal, when he falls on hard times back there, and ends up living in a cabin in West Dawson. She read a scene between Aubrey and his sister, who has decided to leave town so that he can use the cabin.
She’s not sure exactly how this story is going to turn out, but in the weeks since she started it, she’s written 50,000 words of a first draft, and it seems to be going well. Just 10 or 11 drafts to go.
Foss concluded her reading with a short passage from her second novel, Half Life, at the point when a young woman who really wanted to be a theoretical physicist learned that she was probably better suited to becoming a high-school physics teacher.
There was a lively discussion about writing techniques, and she outlined the process that she had used in figuring out how to juggle the 12 character viewpoints in her first novel, which she eventually found she had to diagram on a wall chart. She has subsequently avoided having to deal with that many plot threads and character studies in the same book.
That novel, Smoke River, was influenced by her time as a journalist and dealt with tensions created over land use between First Nations and Settler populations sharing a region.
The formal part of the evening ended with Krista Foss giving away several copies of that novel, which she said she just didn’t have room for in her suitcase anymore.
