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Veronica Austen

What are you currently reading?

Would you believe a Harlequin for my Narrative Forms course that I'm teaching at Laurier? Otherwise, I'm reading Dickens's Dombey and Son for our UW Dickens Reading Group.

I can best answer this question by saying what I would like to be reading what I currently don't have time for:

And I own all of these in hard cover from when they first came out, so for the first two, that goes to show how long it takes me to find time for books that I don't put on my syllabi!

And a non-hardcover that I own and desperately want to have time to read: The Al Purdy A-Frame Anthology.

What are your top five favourite texts?

Well, I'm not sure about "favourite" since that tends to change every day, but here are some of the ones -- either texts or authors -- I find most interesting and/or enjoyable.

  1. Claire Harris's She (a novel-in-verse and not an easy read, but it's lack of clarity means you can find some new and important insights every time)
  2. Any of Al Purdy's poetry, so I'd recommend Beyond Remembering: The Collected Poems of Al Purdy (and watch Gord Downie's video of Purdy's "At the Quinte Hotel"! It's available on youtube)
  3. Edwidge Danticat's The Dew Breaker (a poignant representation of Papa Doc's regime in Haiti, in particular the violence of the Tonton Macoutes and the continuing resonances of it both in Haiti and in the Haitian community in the US).
  4. And how about just in general some great contemporary poets:
    Adam Dickinson (Kingdom Phylum, in particular); Tim Bowling (The Witness Ghost, in particular, but I have The Book Collector on my long list of want-to-reads); Paul Vermeersch (The Fat Kid is wonderful, beautiful in its simplicity)
Favourite from Childhood:

What are the top five texts that you find to be the most useful for teaching?

Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea works great in discussions of colonialism and post-colonialism while also functioning great in discussions of narrative theory.

Edwidge Danticat's Krik? Krak! -- a collection of short stories that's particular useful in discussions of gender and the implications of choosing writing as a career.

Believe it or not, various verses from Heinrich Hoffmann's Struwwelpeter tend to make appearances in many of my courses, not necessarily as required reading, but as example texts during lecture. Hoffmann's text is great for discussions of constructions of childhood, for narrative analysis, and for image/text discussions.

What texts have you had the most fun researching?

Edwidge Danticat's Brother I'm Dying, but I'm not sure getting to go through the report into someone's death (Danticat's 81-year-old uncle, Joseph Dantica who died in the custody of U.S. Homeland Security in 2004), including the report of his autopsy, should really count as fun. Regardless, it was a different kind of research for me, so it was an especially engaging process.

What would you be if you weren't an English professor?

Well, a figure skating coach (and that's what my five-year-old "When I grow up I want to be..." project said!), but is it too late to become a doctor, a media mogul, and/or the head of a Fortune 500 company? Would I have to have an aptitude for any of those careers?