Southwest Saskatchewan writers contribute to anthology about life in a pandemic
mliebenberg@prairiepost.com
The extraordinary and in many ways lifechanging experience of a society in lockdown at the start of a global pandemic in 2020 was the inspiration for the first-ever anthology published by the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild (SWG).
The book, titled apart: a year of pandemic poetry and prose, includes contributions by several southwest Saskatchewan writers.
SWG Program Manager Yolanda Hansen said there has been a really positive response to the anthology and it has been well received since the initial online launch in July 2021.
“I think we achieved what we set out to,” she noted. “Everybody who was involved in it, is very proud of the final product. … I think all of our contributors are quite proud of the book and of being in it. It’s pretty special that the anthology includes both established writers with multiple books or multiple publications, and then there are people in there that this is their very first publication ever. That’s a very proud feeling for them too that they’re able to be published along with some big names.”
All the contributors to this anthology are SWG members, which was a key requirement for consideration of submissions. Other criteria included that their submissions were previously unpublished and related to the anthology’s theme of life during the pandemic.
“We had started to make the plans for this book about six months into the pandemic, and by that time it was really clear to us that our members were missing out on a lot of opportunity,” she said. “Events were cancelled and they weren’t able to do a lot of programming that they were used to doing. So we thought, let’s create some opportunities for our members. Everybody was paid for their submission.”
More than 200 submissions by nearly 100 writers were received, and the work of 68 writers were selected for the anthology. Their contributions include poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and a scene from a play.
The anthology is both a showcase of the writing talent of SWG members and an account of a momentous moment in human history.
“Maybe people are sick of hearing about the pandemic, but we also recognize that it’s a lived experience for everyone,” Hansen mentioned. “Writers of all genres have the ability to reflect upon and to write about a shared lived experience, and we thought they had something important to say.”
Writers have always been using their storytelling to respond to and interpret what happens in society. This anthology therefore continues that tradition.
“As I read through the final book, I found myself empathizing with everyone and finding myself in that writing too,” she said. “All these writers, whether it was poems or short stories or whatever, were writing about things that readers will find very familiar, because we all lived through it. We all lived through social distancing and masking and not seeing our families on holidays and all of those things, and our members just were able to put that into words and capture some of it.”
The SWG hosted two in-person launch events for the anthology, but there were also other events organized by writers.
“That’s been really exciting to see a lot pandemic allowed her to be more of a writer, of ownership by the contributors,” Hansen because she was at home and she used the said. “It’s not just us putting things on, but opportunity to write and also learn through the contributors have taken it upon themonline writing workshops. selves to do their own launches online or in “I was really inspired by what was going on person.” around me,” she said. “I have family in the
Two of those other launch events took United States and Toronto. So I was hearing place in southwest Saskatchewan during about how this pandemic was affecting them. the fall of 2021, featuring readings by Caitlin I wanted to bring both worlds together, the McCullam-Arnal from Eastend, Madonna farming community, but also the city.” Hamel from Val Marie, Helen Mourre from She participated in an online SWG workRosetown, and Peggy Worrell from Swift shop about conflict and tension in fiction Peggy Worrell wrote a historical fiction Current. writing, which helped her to develop the short story, On the Eve of Halloween, in
These four writers received a SK Arts micharacter Leonard and she is now working spired by the death of her grandfather Heincro grant. They held an in-person reading on a novel based on the town that he is from. rich Weinmeister in Rhein, Saskatchewan in Eastend and an online reading during a “I came up with this character Leonard and during the Spanish Flu.
Write Out Loud event hosted on the Lyric it just all came together,” she said. “It was She immediately thought about her paterTheatre Digital Stage. the first time this ever happened to me. It nal grandfather when she saw the SWG call
McCullam-Arnal said the reading in Eastjust came out. I didn’t really think that really for submissions for an anthology about the end was well attended and due to physically happened to artists. I thought it was a cliche, COVID-19 or other epidemics. distanced seating there was not room to acbut I literally wrote out a rough draft of it in “I knew he was young and I knew my commodate everyone interested in the event. an hour and wrote it in a week or two.” grandmother Elizabeth was widowed with
“The writers met for dinner before and it Madonna Hamel wrote a nonfiction piece six children,” she said. “My father had told was almost like a mini writers’ retreat,” she for the anthology titled Essential Work. She me that he died on the eve of Halloween, recalled. “We all shared about why we write was the writer-in-residence at Wallace Stegand because my own dad was the eldest son, and what we’re doing, and so it was a really ner House in Eastend when the pandemic he had to quit school in Grade 6 to help his positive experience.” unfolded, which provided her with a unique mother on the farm and that spelled the end
She felt the virtual Write Out Loud reading perspective on events. She had plans on how of his childhood.” was beneficial to reach a wider online audito spend her birthday there, but the pandemShe carried out detailed background reence, including her family in Ontario. This ic made it impossible. search and the story includes references to is the first time she is published in an anthol“Before it hit the plan was that my sister news and events from contemporary newspaogy, and she appreciated the opportunity as would come and celebrate my birthday at per articles. an emerging writer to have her work in the Stegner House,” she recalled. “So it was way “Research is in some ways the best part same publication as established and notable more exacerbated, this feeling of being alone of writing, because of how much a person authors. and not with my things, because I couldn’t learns, and the parallels between the Spanish
Her fictional piece Leonard goes to Florida be with family and I didn’t have anything Flu and COVID are remarkable,” she said. is about a farmer’s journey during the panaround me that was mine. I was in this great “That was apparent immediately. The fear, demic to reconnect with his daughter and place, but it wasn’t how I thought it was gothe travel restrictions, the wearing of masks, hopefully also get a vaccine shot. ing to be on my birthday.” public buildings closing, experimenting with “He’s inspired by many of the people in She used this sense of being away from
some questionable treatments, all of that. my community,” she said. “I also grew up in home and familiar things to reflect on home
And so that lead me to think about compara rural community in Ontario. If I think far lessness and how the pandemic experience is
ing and contrasting the two epidemics in part back enough, he’s probably inspired by the different for the haves and the have nots.
one and part two of my story.” farmers and ranchers that I grew up with “Lately I’m thinking a lot about how people
The second part of the story features a as well. … The main character is male, but I on the margins, people on the fringes are
family’s experience in Regina during the COhope people would see the female characters, actually not a minority,” she said. “The mi
VID-19 pandemic. Worrell created a fictional because I was trying to say something about nority are the wealthy and when something
character, also called Elizabeth, in the role of the role of women in a lot of ranching and like COVID happens or the pandemic, it’s
great granddaughter of Heinrich Weinmeisfarming communities.” interesting how much we interview the exAccording to McCullam-Arnal the ter. perts or the famous people, and these aren’t the people that are suffering as much as the people that have already been marginalized.”
She actually wrote her submission to the anthology as a companion piece to something else she wrote while staying at Stegner House during the pandemic. That previous piece, called Hearth Day, is a lament about not being able to celebrate Earth Day during the pandemic. It was published in the Canadian magazine Prairie Fire and won its creative nonfiction prize. She has been keeping a pandemic journal and it became a useful resource for writing another piece, which she then submitted to SWG for the anthology.
his story of life during two different pandemic is about loss and disappointment, but also about perseverance during challenging times.
“It’s also about resilient women who make a live for themselves and their children after their husbands died,” she said.
Worrell felt this anthology represents a meaningful contribution about the impact of the pandemic on ordinary lives.
“It’s a historical record and what stands out for me is that it records how the pandemic has touched individual lives in a real and personal way,” she said. “And that’s of far more interest to me than reading statistics and looking at graphs and all of that. I hate to use the kind of trite expression of it being a snapshot in time, but to some extent it is that. And when these pieces were written, none of us had any idea that the pandemic would still be at the point it’s at now. We couldn’t have imagined that.”