Welcome to the 5 Questions Series. Each week, I’ll ask five questions of some of my favorite authors, editors, publishers, and other industry professionals. This week, I’m talking with Lareina Abbott.
You were recently published in an anthology edited by JJ Lee. What’s your story about and how was that process for you?
2024 was a huge year for publication for me. In December of 2023 my time with the Audible Indigenous Writers Circle and my Indigenous mentor ended. I also had some health issues holding me back. It was like I was driving in a car with no steering wheel. I felt launched but undirected as a writer, careening towards something unseen. I was in a bad place, but in 2024 two things changed that for me:
1) I went through the Artist Way course (again) at the beginning of 2024 with some friends from my writing group, which resulted in some publication goals despite how I felt physically.
2) I went to a memoir class with Paulo de Costa, who taught me that I could submit essays from my memoir for publication in anthologies, without negatively affecting the possible publication of my memoir.
And so, in about February or March, I put together a big ol’ list of submission possibilities and I went for it. I think I submitted over fifty things. In 2024 I ended up publishing eight non-fiction essays, mostly from my memoir, four poems, and three short fiction stories in a total of seven different publications across Canada and the United States. As I am an emerging writer, this was a big jump for me.
‘Upon a Midnight Clear,’ edited by JJ Lee, is a compilation of horrible Christmas nonfiction stories from memoirists across Canada. My submission was a result of this publication drive that I challenged myself with. It is a story, called ‘Advent,’ of when I took a year off of work to go to Europe on an ‘ideal’ winter sabbatical in the south of Spain, and why I actually left Canada and what actually happened in Spain.
You’re interested in the idea of spirituality and writing? Can you talk about how one informs the other?
I guess what I am interested in is how people connect to the source. How writers reach down into that underground river of inspiration and get juiced up. Like, what is your writing water witch? I write my best stuff when I’m connected to that energy, and I think that I get there by reading poetry before I write, or by reading something that I love, like anything by Cherie Dimaline or Margaret Atwood. I can also get there by listening to music while I write. But sometimes I need to smudge, or do some sort of ritual. I guess I’m just curious about how other people achieve a flow state.
We met at When Words Collide last August and again at Surrey International Writers’ Conference in October. What role do writing conferences play in your life in general?
I’m a life-long learner. It’s a bit of a problem. The problem is that I feel like if I take enough courses I’ll someday be good enough, when I really just need to do the thing. I have too much education, a BSC, a MS and a Doctorate, plus millions of writing classes. J.J. Lee told me that I’m not allowed to get any more education, and he’s actually correct. I’ll still go to conferences to connect and because I really am the most inspired when I’m in a class and when I have an instructor to impress or that I want to like my writing. My best work has come out of classes, but it’s not the most efficient way to write. I love the energy of a conference, I love to immerse myself in the fizzy bathbomb of that writer energy. I love writers and I love the people I meet at conferences.
What advice would you give an emerging writer looking for a writing community?
I have three writing groups that I found through the Alexandra Writers Centre Society in Calgary. I’ve taken so many classes with them. The Writers Guild of Alberta is awesome also. Volunteer and take classes with your local associations, they are gold.
What are you working on now?
I am currently querying my memoir with agents, called ‘Song Back Grandmother,” which is a back to culture memoir about the year I spent travelling to interview and take part in ceremony with my aunt who is a Métis elder. I’m continually editing this memoir, so it feels like I’m working on it as I query.
But I usually write Indigenous themed dark speculative fiction. I am in the middle of a Science Fiction novel based on Mars that asks ‘What would you do if you were a colonist on another planet and you realized you were killing an Indigenous culture just by being there?” It’s more fun than it sounds. And I want to start working on an idea I have for a dark fiction novel about a Métis man who dies, doesn’t realize he is dead, and becomes a spirit vigilante guided by the two Métis spirits, the Métis devil, Li Jyaab, and a tough Auntie, to avenge crimes that happen in the north. It’s kinda an Old Gods type novel. Plus all the short story and essay projects I do. In 2025 I have a short Métis northern fairy tale called ‘Maxim and the Devil,’ coming out in the Prairie Devil anthology, and a poem and an essay about the northern oil fields coming out in the International Human Rights Art Movement publication. If you want to follow my progress, you can find me on Instagram @boneblackstories.
Bonus question: Have you ever taken a picture of a weird bird?
In November of 2023 I attempted to win NaNoWriMo. Never again. That month of writing almost killed my creativity and it took me months to recover. But each day I had a word count I needed to achieve and so I was always searching for ideas. One day as I looked out from my desk at my front window, I saw that the massive tree across from me was covered in crows. The tree was still alive with yellow leaves against a blue sky. The black crows cocked their heads in conversation with each other and hopped nimbly from branch to branch, ducking behind the leaves. As I looked closer I saw that on one branch a lone crow sat with white in its wings. It wasn’t a magpie, it had no iridescent blue or the long tail. It spread its wings and a band of white feathers showed for a moment across its back and through both of its wings. A chill ran through me and I couldn’t stop looking until it flew away. I wrote a children’s story that day about that crow called ‘King Crow and the River of Shining Light,’ which may or may not be published in 2027 as a picture book depending on whether or not I get the rewrite figured out. Here are my attempts at photographing my King Crow.
Finnian Burnett 