Carolyne J Montgomery - Reader & Writer

Carolyne Reads and Writes

Literary Festivals

Almost Midsummer

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After days of drought and watering restrictions, the lawn is as hard as iron, and the perennials are drooping, with only the hardiest persisting. But, last night, the metal roof chimed with plump raindrops. Finally, a welcome storm.

WATERMARKED

This month’s short story installment is “Saving Things.”

It’s the story of Lucie, the graduate student, with whom Michael had an affair. It explores the enduring effects of her exploitation by one of her professors. The story is set in Halifax, and I learned a bit about East Coast whales while I was writing it. I hope you enjoy it.

What am I reading:

Who doesn’t love reading Ann Patchett. I’ve written about her book The Dutch House, before. Her latest book, Whistler has similar charms—family disruption, grudges, regrets, and misunderstandings. Accidents and scars, physical and emotional. Secrets revealed or not. Forgiveness. I loved it. I think it is a perfectly balanced read, but some say it is too sweet. Keep writing Ann.

What I am listening to:

I’m listening to Angel Down, the 2026 Pulitzer Prize winner. “Angel Down plunges you into the heart of World War I and weaves a polyphonic tale of survival, supernatural wonder, and moral conflict.”

Kirby Heyborne, the narrator, does an excellent job of navigating the single, cumulative-sentence work. He is also one of the 166 voices in the audio production of George Saunders ‘, Lincoln in the Bardo.

I can’t remember how I stumbled on this work—possibly from an NYT review or why I chose the audio format. But the truth is, it is so bizarre (over-the-top) that I think I would have found it unreadable in print format. It’s All Quiet on the Western Front meets distorted metaphysical speculative fiction. The vivid descriptions of the carnality of World War I ( and I suppose any war—I’m thinking of the deliberate ongoing destruction of Gaza, Ukraine and Iran) are laced with alliteration, obtuse, improbable and fantastic similes, metaphors and symbolism.

An unlikely degenerate band of five anti-heroes, one of whom is a young boy, and all that means in terms of caring and needing to be cared for, has the common purpose of surviving the craziness. But can they overcome their own desires to protect the angel they have found tangled in barbed wire in no-man’s land?

You may recognize the author, Daniel Kraus, who coauthored The Shape of Water with Guillermo del Toro, which was made into the Oscar–winning film starring Sally Hawkins.

I’m listening to Angel Down in small batches as I drive around town. It’s so powerful, it’s all I can take. Like all strange and extraordinary things, this novel won’t be for everybody.

What I’m Watching:

Sports media have saturated my life for the last several weeks—The FIFA World Cup, Roland Garros in Paris and then Wimbledon. It’s a good job I’m retired and was able to attend a few FIFA daytime watch parties to wave the Canadian flag. It was agonizing to see the wonderful Felix Auger-Aliassime being eventually defeated by the wily Djokovic after playing a nail-biting five-setter at the Wimbledon Quarterfinal.

What’s Coming Up:

The Denman Island Readers and Writers Festival opens next week with another outstanding line-up of authors and workshops. Seems like it gets better and better each year. I’m looking forward to Maria Reva’s workshop, “Creating Tension through Character Networks.” Maria Reva is the Canadian Ukrainian author of Endling and Good Citizens Need Not Fear. (reviewed here in previous posts)

I’m off now to inspect the garden for signs of recovery after that fabulous and much-needed rainstorm last night.

Thanks for reading

Carolyne

Spring Is Sprung …

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Spring is sprung, the grass is riz.
I wonder where the birdies is.
They say the birdies on the wing, but that’s absurd.
I always thought the wing was on the bird.

Anonymous

April is Poetry Month. When this anonymous ditty shows up in my brain, it is always in my mother’s voice, laden with her Scottish accent. I don’t remember her ever reciting the 3rd and 4th lines.

And along the lines of persistent mothers, Scottish or otherwise, I invite you to listen to Douglas Stuart (author of Shuggie Bain) reading his short story, “A Private View” in the April 20th, New Yorker—which breaks me even further, because of the Scottish voice and sprinking of particular expressions my mother used. “Would it kill you to …” or “A penny for your thoughts,” or “it’s high time you …” Not for the faint of heart.

Watermarked

This month’s installment is “The Tree,” a story inspired by a Zoom free-writing circle. I can’t remember the prompt, but I got stuck on this image of a young girl, stuck in a tree and needing help she didn’t want to ask for—the value of free-writing. Danny Ramadan, the 2022 Haig-Brown Writer-in-Residence, gave me some tips. Several revisions later, here it is, installment four of my short story collection. It is one of my favourite ones. I hope you enjoy it.

Words on the Water

I had a terrific time at Words on the Water. Terrific venue at the Campbell River Maritime Heritage Centre. Maria Reva, a Canadian Ukrainian, shared how Ed Young’s 2019 piece, “The Last of Its Kind,” inspired her Booker-nominated, Endling—just got it from the library. You may know Ed as a prize-winning scientific writer for the Atlantic who has written many outstanding COVID pieces. In addition to hearing the amazing Michel Crummey and Vincent Lang, I met a few new-to-me authors.

Conor Kerr is a Canadian poet and author of Ukrainian-Métis heritage who claims he had to become a “fancy university boy” because he was too klutzy to work in the trades. (Frank feedback from his friends—don’t we love our friends who are willing to give frank feedback?) His Giller-nominated book, Prairie Edge, asks what would happen if, in the spirit of reconciliation and land reform, bison were reintroduced to the Edmonton river valley. It’s funny and sad and absurd. An eye-opener to existing under the pall of cultural prejudice. His latest book, a poetic novella, is Beaver Hills Forever and is on my to-read list.

“You could hear a pin drop” moment came when Tracey Lindberg, a Cree lawyer and author, read “A Hex for Colten”, a chapter from the POV of the boy, Promise and the confrontation with the NotAWarriors and Newest Tribe from her book, The Cree Word for Love, Sâkihitowin, illustrated by works from George Littlechild. Shame, remorse, and anger swirled in the silence of the wood-beamed hall. But Tracey has training in stand-up comedy. We were brought together again by her humility and grace–a lesson in seeing all people as part of humanity in all situations.

What am I reading?

I’ll be dipping into Endling by Maria Reva and Birdie, the book Tracey wrote before The Cree Word for Love, Sâkihitowin. What are you reading?

I’ll see you in May when I’ll have some stories about my first swim meet. Or, I might be too traumatized to share!

Thanks again for reading.

January in Comox

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Watermarked Series

This year, I’m publishing my series, Watermarked. Twelve interlinked stories, one each month, will be posted HERE. It’s a simple way for me to get them “out there.” To celebrate what I’ve learned from writing them and move on to new writing projects.

Subscribers will get an email notification. By December, the whole series will be accessible using the Watermarked link on the home page. You can subscribe HERE.

Woodcut Picture of Loon on lake with fall Maple.

This month, you will meet Claire and Michael in the story, “The August Regatta.”

I hope you will enjoy Claire, Michael, Brianna and Stéphanie’s coming-of-age experiences. Achieving maturity isn’t age-related.

Please invite anyone you know who might be interested in joining us. I look forward to your comments. Please remember that all these characters and situations are fictional.

Writing and Conferences

War Resisters: Standing Against the Vietnam War

With the short days and long nights, it’s is a perfect time of year to update my website and read and learn more. The ninth annual North Island Writers Conference is next weekend, January 16th to 18th, at North Island College. Catch an interview with Susan Juby, our keynote speaker, being interviewed by the fabulous Sharon McInnes, for our local radio station, Dig FM (formerly CVOX), on the program Beyond the Page. Susan is a terrific example of the many roads to “adulthood.” She is a prolific and funny writer.

I’ll be taking the short story session, led by Claire Mulligan, who is currently the Haig-Brown writer-in-residence in Campbell River. She has an MFA in screenwriting. I’m curious to learn about the “Mulligan Method.”

An hour up the Island Highway, the Campbell River writers’ conference, Words on the Water is on March 13th-14th. I’ve never been, so a new adventure. The delightful Michael Crummey and Vincent Lam are among the speakers.

What Am I Reading

This fall, NIWC chair and my writing group member, Joline Martin, published War Resisters: Standing Against the Vietnam War. Joline alternates interviews with resisters with chapters on the political context of the times. I was in high school in the GTA in the mid-60s, but I remember the street scene outside Rochdale on Bloor Street, a haven for dislocated resisters. It’s a history worth revisiting in 2026.

I hadn’t read Alan Hollinghurst since The Line of Beauty, where nearly every sentence is rich, dense, and exquisite like a dark chocolate hedgehog. But the nights were long, and I got lost in the life of Dave Win, a biracial boy, growing up in 1960s Britain in Our Evenings. He has a white, single mother, a seamstress (which I loved). He endures public school, racism, sexism (he’s gay) classism and the Thatcher era on his journey to become an actor. It’s long, detailed and delicious.

That’s all for now

Thanks again for dropping in. I hope you’ve enjoyed this post and will read the first story of my series, Watermarked.

See you again in February. Meanwhile, I’m listening to the rain pounding the metal roof and the southeaster that’s rattling the front windows.

A Swimming Adventure in Barbados

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Comox Valley Sharks Masters — The Jellyfish Division

A year ago, during a challenging time, I was offered an escape to the Caribbean this November to the Barbados Open Water Festival. Honestly, this time last year, I would have agreed to just about anything—sanding floors in Sidney, dry-walling in Duncan, coal mining in Cumberland. But it turns out, the 2025 Barbados Open Water Festival was an excellent event.

I trained harder over the summer, encouraged by the more accomplished swimmers in my group, improving my technique and endurance, and met my goal of completing the 3.3-kilometre event despite the swells and gusting winds that are unusual for Carlisle Bay. Three of our members placed in age group categories on both days. And the answer to the classic travel question, Would you do it again? Absolutely.

Eight of us stayed in a share house like it was 1976 again. It worked perfectly, lubricated by rum punches. Each day, we took the public shuttle bus, a ZR, to the beach. The ZR is a privately owned white van taxi service that stops at official stops but can also be hailed. They are a cultural microcosm—packed, pumping out loud tunes and usually speeding. As one taxi driver explained, “When I tell the tourists about the ZR, half are excited to try them and half are terrified.” I loved them.

Each ZR trip is a minestrone of tourists, commuters, and school kids, transiently sharing the same goal—being at a specific destination at a certain time. This shared goal promotes an efficient and kind co-operation. Experienced passengers direct the tourists. Passengers sum you up, exchange places and find the exact best spot for each traveller. Jump seats are flicked open and closed. Somehow, the passengers make intuitive adjustments for all the body types and abilities. Four abreast on seats that I would have thought could only fit three or even two. On occasion, there is a little impatience with uninitiated tourists.

Cash ($3.50 B) is given to the driver or the person acting as a conductor. You can’t miss your stop if you announce your destination as you board. The crowd will guide you off at the correct stop.

If only for a twenty-minute ride, it was a privilege to be included in such a cooperative community. And it was weird doing up a seat belt when I got into a private vehicle to ride to the airport.

What I am reading


Louis Jean François Lagrenée (French, 1725 – 1805)Mars and Venus, Allegory of Peace (Mars et Vénus, allégorie sur la Paix), 1770 Source Getty’s Open Content Program

When I walked into the Comox library after I got back from Barbados, to return my overdue books, I noticed the 2025 Booker Prize Winner, Flesh by David Szalay, was displayed for short-term borrowing. This is my lucky day, I thought and one of the advantages of our excellent Vancouver Island Regional Library service. So slightly jet-lagged, but mainly riveted, I swept through the spare, tense prose. “OKAY” working hard as dialogue in each chapter.

The story is a merciless study of an unlikeable, passive male protagonist, Istavan, drifting through life, dependent on external circumstances. Chance, class, nationality, education, and male physicality (and sexuality) determine his fate. The transitions between the ten chapters are abrupt and disorienting. but the author skillfully drops the reader into the new time and scene, confirming the evolution of major events. The plot is tense, and the protagonist is infuriating. The dialogue is spare but loaded, uncluttered by embodiment or action. “Okay.” There is little exposition. Yet, this reader couldn’t stop reading. For a more detailed review, see Keiran Goddard’s review in the Guardian.

A much longer book with an eight-year-old, albino protagonist, Edgar, that stuck with me for days, is
Edgar and Lucy by Victor Lodato. Travel with Edgar after his caring grandmother dies, and he tries to understand the harmed and harmful adults remaining in his life. The perfect point of view of this intelligent, sensitive child is heartbreaking.

North Island Writers Conference — Save The Date

And if you are in the neighbourhood, consider joining the Comox Valley Writers Society and North Island College for the ninth annual North Island Writers Conference.

Thanks for reading

Carolyne

How I spent my summer vacation

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or

How to stay calm while monitoring the decline and fall of the American Republic from uncomfortable proximity.

(This may be too wordy for the title of a post)

It has been a great summer in the Comox Valley—long sunny days (but now rapidly shortening) days, a warm sea for swimming and brown lawns while the marrows establish their dominance in the garden.

The Denman Island Readers and Writers Festival

In July, the annual Denman Island Readers and Writers Festival. (Should there be possessive apostrophes?) Check out the DIRWF site for complete details of the authors.

After my wander to the Sunshine Coast last year for a visit to their annual Festival of the Written Arts, it was great to be back on Denman—so many familiar faces, members of my former writing group, current members of the Comox Valley Writers society and old friends. And due to the intimacy of the venue, a chance to make new acquaintances.

I treated myself to Caroline Adderson’s workshop, Ending it All. The salient points are there must be a a good beginning and middle to your work or you are doomed to have an Insufficient or Bad Ending. What type of ending will satisfy your readers?

Bill Engelson and I applied Caroline’s algorithm to our current projects to tease out improvements. My protagonist’s motivations (to avoid shame and regret) were not clear enough. And I’m grateful that with structured guidance, I can see that now. Even better, and I think I know what to do to fix it.

At the Festival, Caroline Adderson read from A Way to Be Happy (longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize) treating us to some fascinating details of her experience at the BC Archives, where she was able to review case histories and process documents from a lower mainland psychiatric hospital in the 1920’s–research that she used in the final story of her eight story collection—a commentary on the evolving practice of psychiatry, culture, morality, feminism, human nature and chance. Masterful.

Fiona Tinwei Lam, a Vancouver poet, presented her poetry videos. Her poems are animated with dynamic visual media. My favourite one was Plasticnic. https://fionalam.net/poetry-videos/plasticnic/ This session was followed by lunch, where I regretfully drank an iced latté served in a plastic cup.

The graphic novelist, Sarah Leavitt, who prefers to be called a comic book artist, presented her 2024 comic memoir, Something Not Nothing, created after the 2020 MAiD death of her partner.

Cover of Something Not Nothing

It’s a tale of a loved one’s journey of living with a debilitating, progressive, chronic illness. It’s the tale of the decision to die by that loved one and the subsequent grief and recovery journey. It’s funny, poignant and honest. Importantly, it is self-compassionate.

Book Cover from Dundurn Press

Do you love Paris, gastronomy and don’t shy away from the stories of physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring nightly behind the two-way swinging doors of these kitchens? The Rise and Fall of Magic Wolf is for you. Perhaps think of Ralph Fiennes in the 2022 film, The Menu. And Timothy Taylor cooks. Check out his blog for the restaurant, Noma’s soil recipe.

John Vaillant shared vignettes from interviews with firefighters, workers, and civilians who escaped the 2016 Fort McMurray fire, as described in his 2023 book, Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast. If you haven’t heard him speak already, here is a link to his interview by Gaia Vince at the 2024 Royal Society of Arts and Commons. Definitely worth a listen.

When I read his book, two years ago,  I was in awe of the humanity of the citizens of that town as they co-operated with the astonishing evacuation along the single highway leading them south to safety. The vibe was, “Nobody wanted to be that guy.”

The basic human right to breathe fresh air is in jeopardy. This is no longer a remote threat, affecting only the developing world or major urban centres; it is now an expected seasonal risk here in Canada as our dessicated boreal forest ignites.

 A lot of sitting and intense thinking (three days) for this body and brain but I’ve been provoked, inspired, and challenged to get back at it, to improve my bad beginnings, saggy middles and unsatisfying endings in my current short story projects.

REJECTION

Meanwhile, in my writing journey, I continue receiving sporadic rejections of my short story collection (like the third minute of microwaving a bag of popcorn—the pops are fewer and the silence between them, longer)

And my favourite rejection so far—a lovely encouraging letter from Keagan Hawthorne, Associate Editor at Gaspereau Press. Soon, I must decide whether to pursue assisted publishing or post my work here.

SPORTY STUFF

The US Open

No rackets for me right now, but if you love tennis and the US Open it’s an exciting time. Nobody wants to be a “hater” but if you enjoy disliking Nole, check out this Substack, Sweater Weather, written by Brandon Taylor. Terrific writing and craft tips. Meanwhile, go Felix and Leyla!

On the Bike

Luck smiled on us for a four-day, supported ride from Jasper to Canmore.  Ben of Mountain Madness was a great host. It’s a blessing that I can still complete these adventures. You can’t buy the weather, and it can be pretty random in the Rockies but we lucked out with four mainly sunny days. I didn’t want to push my luck by complaining about the mind-blowing headwinds at the Athabasca Glacier.

Thanks for reading. Please continue to get all your routine immunizations. Coming up for me this fall, influenza, RSV and Covid. Follow the science. Until next time, take good care of yourself and your loved ones.

Margaret Atwood comes to the Comox Valley

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“As a woman of a certain age,

in my 60s’ with certain interests (reading and writing), a brush with greatness, Margaret Atwood (MA) was beyond my dreams. MA has been a part of my life since my twenties when I first read her second novel, Surfacing. I’d seen her speak before. I was pregnant with my first child when I went to her reading from The Handmaid’s Tale in (gulp) 1986 at UBC. And later, her Massey Lecture from Payback (Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth) at the Chan Centre in 2008.

Exciting News: Margaret Atwood Visits Denman Island!

But this time was going to be different.

Adjacent to Alice Munro’s passing, this encounter had an unspoken urgency. MA will be eighty-five in November. And while she hasn’t received a Noble prize she’s the recipient of two Booker Prizes, one in 2000 for the Blind Assasin and one in 2019 shared with Bernadine Everisto for the Testaments. 

The Denman Island Readers and Writers Festival (DIRWF) organizers arranged three events on Denman Island and then in coordination with The Comox Valley Writers Society, a fourth event in Courtenay. It seemed to me like a gruelling schedule for an eighty-year-old.

The Wednesday the week before, I lined up outside the Denman Activity Centre, like the star-struck acolyte I am. Eager fans chatted in the sunshine for two hours before the tickets went on sale. DIRWF volunteers tackled the payment logistics, organized the lineup (thank you again for all you do) and I lucked out.

I was one of seventy guests at a private home on Denman at a fabulously catered event with free access to this astonishing woman. She’s diminutive in stature but that is it. She wore the expected brightly coloured scarf. There was no handler and the guests were respectful and polite. You already know she’s a smart, witty and perceptive woman.

In our brief conversation, I gushed pathetically about her influence in all those stages of my life and we talked briefly about agents and publishing. She reminisced about the days when you didn’t need an agent. When I mentioned that there are a lot of writers on Denman and in the Comox Valley, her retort was (paraphrasing here) “Yes but what do they write!” Touché MA. And, in that measured laconic tone, perhaps there was a comment about the multi-year tenacity of one of the organizers in persuading her to come to Denman.

A personal moral disorder (having bought a hard copy of her latest, heartbreaking short story collection, Old Babes in the Wood from our local bookstore, Blue Heron Books) was the vague expectation that she might be signing. But how many MA signatures does one need? And thanks to the common sense of the organizers there was no book signing allowing for more mingling and conversation. At all events, pre-signed copies of After The Flood and  Old Babes in the Wood were made available by Abraxas and Laughing Oyster Bookshop.  

My second event

was the Sunday afternoon event in Courtenay shared with about four hundred other MA admirers. Stewart Goodings, the co-chair of the DIWRF and possibly the tenacious persuader, hosted the conversation.

MA treated us to a reading of her short story “Bad Teeth” from her latest collection. It is not one of the semi-autobiographical, heartbreaking Tig and Nell stories but also poignantly observes loss and aging in long-term female friendships. My favourite story in this collection is the title one, “Babes in the Woods”— a study of memory, ritual and loss in the setting of a family cottage.

The conversation flowed freely and included topics like her Substack, In the Writing Burrow and her graphic novel, Angel Catbird where a scientist mutates into a feline-avian superhero. MA is a devoted conservationist and bird watcher as was her husband, Graeme Gibson. And yes, migratory birds are the “Canary in the Coal Mine.” She’s passionately anti-outdoor cat (mea culpa). Funds were raised at the CVWS for the Point Pelee organization.

Denman Event Doll (pinata)

She talked about her cameo roles in the productions of Alias Grace and The Handmaid’s Tale and her serialized online novel which became The Heart Goes Last.

And what about The Future Library? MA was the first author to donate a manuscript to this one-hundred-year project that started in 2014 in Norway where a forest has been planted which will supply paper for an anthology of books.

Oh, and people seem to like making and giving MA effigies. At both events, a cleverly constructed doll was presented to her.

Canada Post

And in the afterglow of the weekend,

I learned where the quote appearing on the 2021 stamp came from—”A word after a word is power,” which is also the title of the 2019 CBC documentary on MA.

It’s a line from the poem, “Spelling” from her tenth book of poetry, True Stories published in 1981. This is a video of her reading it at the NY Public Library in 2020.

And if you aren’t already crying—try “Dearly” from her 2020 collection of poems, Dearly.

“It’s an old word, fading now: Dearly did I wish, Dearly did I long for: I loved him dearly.”