HER FIRST NOVEL AT AGE 95
Regina writer crafts fantasy tale
REGINA With her signature giggle and a quick sign-off, Kay Parley punctuated a reading of her very first novel on Tuesday afternoon.
“There, I’m going to stop at that,” Parley told an audience of 40-some neighbours at the Bentley retirement home in south Regina.
She meant it quite simply, but the publication of The Grass People does mark the end of a long journey.
Parley was five years old when she began dreaming up this fairy tale world of little creatures that live amid the wild prairie grasses.
“There’s the old truth, write what you know, just sit down and write what you know,” said 95-year-old Parley.
“I knew this. I lived on the farm, I played in those bluffs; I knew those little grass people,” she added, laughing.
While playing outside on her family’s farm near Moffat, “I’d be out there listening to all the sounds of nature. It’s easy to imagine little people among them.”
The characters she has invented over the years comprise her first fantasy novel after decades of non-fiction writing, including a successful memoir published in 2016, Inside the Mental: Silence, Stigma, Psychiatry, and LSD.
The new book includes themes of community, co-operation and the value of nature.
“I think it’s a really simply written book, but it has so much more symbolism and connotations going on in it,” said Debra Bell, Parley ’s co-publisher at Radiant Press.
The new Regina-based company chose The Grass People as its first publication.
“There’s very much a Donald Trump theme running through this,” added Bell, “because the new mayor of the big city-village, he wants to build walls all around the villages, he wants to install guard towers.
“There’s this back and forth between, will they maintain their way of life or will they be overcome by a tyrant that decides he wants to take over all of the villages?” added Bell.
“She’s always saying it’s about sociology, really,” said Regina author Judith Silverthorne, who is Parley’s second cousin, “… about society and the way we live and how we treat people and all of that, and I think we can all learn a lesson from The Grass People.”
Silverthorne first read the manuscript two decades ago, when Parley had finished her 20-year writing process.
“I got the idea in the ’20s and I started it in the ’70s and finished it in the ’90s,” Parley explained.
“All of a sudden, it’s going to be out there in the world,” said Silverthorne, “and it’s just so wonderful and I think people are really going to enjoy it.”
Parley had submitted the book to a handful of publishers years ago, but didn’t pursue it after being turned down.
Seeing the 470-page novel is “unbelievable, really,” said Parley. “I mean, when you’ve waited this long.”
Bell first heard of The Grass People when she was working at Hagios Press; someone had likened Parley’s book to Watership Down.
When Bell and her husband, John Kennedy, started Radiant Press, they sought out Parley.
Meanwhile, the author had gained a second wind after the success of Inside the Mental, published by the University of Regina Press.
The Grass People comes with an endorsement from Giller Prizewinning author Will Ferguson: “Kay Parley has created an entire world, fully realized and richly layered, people with fascinating characters.”
For a copy of The Grass People, find Radiant Press online at radiantpress.ca, or attend its book launch party on Monday, Nov. 19, 7 p.m., at The Artesian.
There’s the old truth, write what you know, just sit down and write what you know. I knew this. I lived on the farm, I played in those bluffs.