Ania Vesenny is a Pushcart Prize nominated writer whose work has appeared in Staccato, flashquake, Grimm Magazine, Cezanne’s Carrot, Per Contra, SmokeLong Quarterly, Verbsap, FRiGG, and other journals. Her story “Love Child” won an honorable mention in the 2006 Binnacle Ultra Short Story Competition, and in November of 2006, she received Per Contra’s Evelyn Sullivan Gilbertson Award for an Emerging Artist in Literature. Ania lives in Iqaluit, on Baffin Island, in the Canadian arctic. Visit her blog.

You’re currently working on a magical realism novel set in the arctic. That sounds fascinating! Can you share a brief synopsis?

I feel it is bit early to talk about the synopsis, as the novel is not complete. I will tell you this: a bunch of quirky characters with dubious pasts end up in a tiny arctic village, cut off from the rest of the world. A stranger comes to the village and things start to unfold. Murder, love affairs, flying shamans. Wild animals behave in unexpected ways. And something big is happening in the rest of the world, but my guys only get glimpses of it—dreams, visions. Then the big world comes to them, so to speak, and they have to decide what to do. I have an idea where the novel is going, and the major elements, but the whole process of writing a novel is very fluid, I find. I let things happen, and I observe, and record.

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For those of us who aren’t familiar with the magical realism genre, which novels would you suggest?

I’m one of these people who re-read the same books over and over again. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez is one of them. I get lost in its meandering magic. My all time most favourite novel, The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov, is also magical realism, but I have difficulties recommending it. First of all, at least half of the book is political satire, it digs into and mocks the regime of the Soviet Union of the 1930s, and to truly get all the references and the allusions, one has be intimately familiar with the period. Second, and most important, I tried reading two English translations and all of them butchered the beauty of the novel. But I just googled a bit , and there are several translations available. If anyone knows of a good one, please let me know.

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What have read lately that you’d recommend?

I just finished Taking Comfort by Roger Morris. It is brilliant. It took my breath away. In fact, I started reading something else today, and I could not. I have to take a break from other books.

I bought it because I heard it is a novel in flash, each chapter is a short-short, and this is a style of writing I am interested in, so I took a risk. It turned out to be a book that I will be re-reading. It made me cry, it made me laugh, it made me look at myself in a different way, and it kept me on my toes until the uplifting, satisfying ending. Mercifully uplifting, I must say, as for a while I felt it could have gone either way. I think readers should not frown at the word ‘experimental’, and just take a leap, and open themselves, and read Roger Morris, Jonathan Safran Foer, and others.

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You’re also compiling a short story and flash fiction collection. What is the premise for the collection?

I studied psychology and environments in university, and I am still interested in exploring these topics. I am attracted to the themes of mental and physical health, and how different environments or settings affect us. This sounds rather abstract, but what this boils down to is most of my characters are pretty quirky, and I love seeing the world through their eyes. I am exploring what it means to be sick or to be well, and who defines it for us and labels us, and how nature affects us, or how the built, human-made world affects us. Some of my stories are about immigrants, as I’m an immigrant myself, and some think that this must be my niche. For me this is only one aspect of finding one’s way in the world. If I had to come up with a unifying theme, it would be “Health and Identity”, or something like that.

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Your first short story publication, “Snowrise,” which Per Contra solicited and later nominated for a Pushcart, ends:

“As though a pillow ripped open, the snow starts falling, feathers twirl. Hurry, hurry, light the candle, drop your gown on the floor, let your shoes slide off, slip under the blanket, watch the snow fall. What will happen when the spring comes, no one knows. Snowfall. Yet when Liuba locks her eyes on any given snowflake, it does not fall. It rises.”

How important was it to conclude the story on a positive note?

You know, this story is rooted in a poem by Boris Pasternak, titled “Winter Night”. His winter imagery is amazing, and whenever I see snowflakes twirl, lines from his poems come to me. The translation doesn’t do it justice. Pasternak must be incredibly difficult to translate, because of his use of language. I’m not a poet, and I don’t know many of the technical terms, but, for example, he uses alliteration in the most subtle and amazing way. I feel the words with my whole body. It hurts to read the translation, even if it is one of the best ones I found.

This story started with an image of a winter storm, as I was looking at the flurry of snowflakes, and reciting the poem. Most of my stories start with an image. And it did snow and snow for the days that I wrote the story, and I wrote and watched the snowflakes by my window. And I think for the first time I consciously realized that some of them were indeed rising. I would follow them with my eyes, and they would disappear into the sky. I guess I’ve seen it before, we’ve all seen it, but I never really noticed it, if this makes sense. So the story ends with this observation, and I guess in our minds it is a positive thing, when something rises. But maybe not, you know, because each snowflake also gets lost up there. It all depends on what a positive note is, for us, for that character. I like this character, and I care for her—for this out of place sick immigrant woman, so far from her motherland, alienated from her daughter. I do want her to feel optimistic when she sees the rising snowflakes.

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Tell us about the Evelyn Sullivan Gilbertson Award for an Emerging Artist in Literature that Per Contra awarded you.

The Evelyn Gilbertson Sullivan award came through Per Contra, but the donor was Dr. Jane McGuffin, in memory of her mother. This isn’t their fiction contest. I was beyond thrilled when Miriam N. Kotzin, Per Contra’s fiction editor, called me with the news. Per Contra is such a wonderful magazine, a feast of superb fiction, and they are committed to publishing emerging writers alongside the pros. I am honored to be published there and to be a recipient of the award.

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As a former reader for Vestal Review , you garnered valuable editing experience. Did that help you with your own writing?

When I was reading for Vestal, reading dozens of stories at a single setting, it really hit me—the opening lines are crucial. They don’t have to be sensational, they don’t have to introduce a conflict right away (at least not for me), but there has to be something arresting about them, even if it is their simplicity. A rhythm, an image. They can’t be sloppy. I am more vigilant about my openings now, though I often find it is hard to be objective about my own writing.

On a more mundane level, seeing all the submissions pouring in helped me to be more confident and persevere. To submit, submit, submit, and to not be deterred by rejections.

I loved reading for Vestal. I’d like to be an editor one day. Sometimes rejecting is hard, but the exhilaration of finding true talent and brilliance is worth it.

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You also do some freelance line-editing. What are your qualifications? Guidelines? How can people contact you if they’d like to hire you?

Several people sought me out on Zoetrope Virtual Studios after receiving my reviews. I warned them that English wasn’t my first language, and that I didn’t have any qualifications, but they said it didn’t matter, they liked my reviews and found them useful.

I love line-editing. It engages and challenges my mind in a different way than writing, or even editing my own work. I wish I could edit my own work the way I edit others.

Actually, if I think about it, I do have qualifications. Depends on how you look at it. I have an Honours Bachelor of Science from the University of Toronto, and a Masters of Environmental Studies from York University. My years in academia must count for something. I also worked as a writing tutor for several years, helping undergraduate English majors with their writing and organizational skills. And I am a writer, and a reader.

For my editing clients, I look at the story elements, such as the title, opening, pace, characters, plot, setting, scenes, conclusion, theme, and usually provide at least 500 words of comments, as well as detailed line-edits. I’m honest and straightforward with my clients, I don’t stroke egos. I work with each writer to achieve their best, and they sense it–that I’m not mean, that I do my best for them.

I’m honest and straightforward with my clients. I don’t stroke egos, but I work with each writer to achieve their best, and they sense it—that I’m not mean, that I do my best for them. I just say it as it is, no b/s. Anyone interested can email me.

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You grew up in the former USSR. What is your most memorable experience of that time?

I was a child, so my memories and impressions are scattered and simplistic. If I try to think of something positive, it will be hard to explain, as it was something fleeting, almost ephemeral. I’ll try. I grew up feeling very close to the heroism and passion of the Soviet people during World War II, the Great Patriotic War. Watching the movies, reading the books, I was inspired, and in awe. I devoured the popular children’s books by Arkady Gaidar—every child who grew up in the Soviet Union read them—and I loved the world of the 1930s, the pre-war world. The ephemeral, the hard to explain part is that even then, as a young child, I sensed that something was wrong, that I was in love with something akin to an illusion. I sensed that from the way my parents would smirk at my patriotism, from reading some of the Samizdat and the new, riskier literary magazines that my mother would buy, just before and immediately after the Perestroika. When I read Solzhenitsin, and Evguenia Ginsburg, I learned about the reality of the 1930s—it wasn’t sunny and glorious. The regime was one of the most oppressive ones. I’m well aware of the fact that history was re-written, that what I identified with as a child was Soviet propaganda, yet that illusion still feels special to me. Special and disturbing at the same time.

And then there are the mundane things. Like growing up in a so called communal apartment, where eight families shared the kitchen and the bathroom, and each family lived in its own room—usually sharing it with grandparents as well. The neighbours getting drunk, yelling, fighting, stealing meat from each other’s refrigerators, calling police on each other. You’d stand in line for milk, sometimes for hours, and then they’d say, no more milk, comrades! And you’d go to another store, and another, and another, and stand in lines in each of them, and come home without finding any.

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You now live on Baffin Island. What it is it like? How did you end up there? Does the remoteness bother you?

Someone e-mailed me recently, someone who’s read my bio, I presume, and said, it can’t be true, no one lives on Baffin Island. There are about 7000 people in our town, and the total population of the island, according to Wikipedia, was about 11000 in 2004. I’ve lived her for almost a year. My husband found his dream job here, so we moved. I’ve never lived in a small town before. It is an adventure. I love the tundra, the wilderness, just 10-15 minutes walk from downtown. There is a road in town, called The Road to Nowhere, and it does lead nowhere. We live in The Road to Nowhere subdivision. When we take a cab home, drivers page dispatch with “going nowhere.” Love it. I am still slowly discovering the town, the people, what’s available. There is a writing group, and I even made it to one of the meetings. They say there is a book club. The library is small, but they can order almost anything through the inter-library loan system. Many people are friendly, but the transient nature of the community is also visible—most don’t expect to stay here for longer than 2-3 years, and they don’t feel like investing in new relationships, at least that’s my impression. I’ve also met people who have lived here for twenty, thirty years, and who came back to retire, because they couldn’t live anywhere else.

Right now I enjoy living in a remote community, but I also know I need to be in a bigger place, or closer to a bigger place. I don’t miss Toronto, but I do miss trees. It is a different kind of landscape here, almost surreal. And I miss bookstores—dropping into a bookstore, picking up a book, several books, or a treasure of a new issue of my favorite lit mag. I know I can order on-line and subscribe, and I feel joy and excitement when I get a box at the post office, full of books, but it is a different kind of joy. I miss the ambience of a small bookstore. Or of a huge one. Hmm, maybe I shouldn’t focus on the things that I might miss, because it seems I can actually come up with a few. Like sushi. When I was on a plane to Calgary to visit a friend, I was nervous, thinking that I wouldn’t like the bigness of it—the noise, the air pollution, people rushing. But then we ordered sushi in every night, and all was fine.

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When I hear the word “island” I think of the tropics. But Baffin Island is in the arctic. How cold does it get there? In the summer, what is the average high? Do you enjoy this weather? And tell us how you get fresh food!

Here are the average monthly temperatures for Iqaluit. I’ve added hours of sunlight in parentheses.

January: -25.8C/ -14.4F (6.12)
February: -26.8C/ -16.24F (8.8)
March: -23.5C/ -10.3F (11.78)
April: -14.7C/ 5.54F (14.4)
May: -4.2C/ 24.43F (17.86)
June: 3.4C/ 38.12F (19.2)
July: 7.7C/ 45.86F (18.83)
August: 6.8C/ 44.24F (16.01)
September: 2.3C/ 36.14F (12.97)
October -4.9C/ 23.18F (9.92)
November: -12.7C/ 9.4F (6.99)
December: -22.1C/ -7.78F (5.13)

We’ve had days that were much colder, up to -50C (-58F), with wind chill. A cappuccino in a paper cup would turn lukewarm in a couple of minutes, and if you spill some, the drops would instantly freeze. But we dress for the weather, and I’ve never been cold here. If you have a hood with a fur trim, even your face is protected. I have an Inuit baby-wearing parka, an amautik, with a pouch at the back for my toddler. He slides in next to my back and there is a large hood that covers him completely when he is asleep, and I can pull it over my head as well. I remember going for a walk, and the wind got stronger. I pulled the hood over my head, and right away my face wasn’t freezing anymore. It felt like the wind had stopped, even if I could still feel its force. It was such a surreal experience—watching the wind rush the snow at my feet, feeling warm all over, and listening to my son’s peaceful snoring.

I love the winter, even the dark months. When it is -20C(-4F) and there is no wind, it is the best weather ever, and it does feel much milder. I’m looking forward to the summer too, when the tundra is a patchwork of purple and yellow and green, and almost everywhere you step there are tiny blueberries and mountain cranberries.

Last summer was the warmest in years, we were told. The temperatures were as high as 18C (64.4F). Unfortunately the six warmest weeks are also the mosquito weeks. The mosquitoes are huge, fat, and busy 24 hours a day. The good things are they last for only six weeks, out of which only four are really bad, and there is no West Nile virus here. I remember trying to take a photo, and for the second that it took my camera to focus, about a dozen mosquitoes landed on my citronella sprayed hand. We get some relief on windy days. I’m grateful there are no black flies.

The food. We do have two supermarkets, appropriately called Arctic Ventures and NorthMart. The prices are almost triple compared to Toronto, and fresh produce is not always fresh. I’ve been told I need to go on certain days, but I still haven’t figured this out, I’m not very disciplined this way. We order food via a government sponsored program called ‘food mail’. I send an email order every Monday, to Montreal, and every Saturday I go the airport to pick up our boxes. We can order only healthy foods, no junk. Though they will send macaroni & cheese, but not a bottle of plain carbonated water. With the packing and cargo fees we only pay double, compared to Montreal prices, so that is less than we would pay locally.

This shopping arrangement, coupled with our limited budget, forces me to cook everything from scratch. I am not a sophisticated cook, but I enjoy it. I bake bread and make my own yogurt, which is both cheaper and unbelievably delicious. Though some days I forget I need to soak beans overnight, or that it takes hours for the dough to rise, and I buy a box of frozen spring rolls and pretend we’ve ordered Chinese.

When the sea ice melts we can order from Costco, through a personal shopper in Ottawa. They pack and crate it and send it out on a barge, and then a forklift drops your container by your door. All houses have ’sea-lift’ rooms. Sea lift saves us a lot of money, but you have to go through the ordeal of figuring out how much you need for a year, and last year we ordered at the last minute and didn’t have enough cash to buy all we needed. This year we are prepared.


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On a smaller scale, where is your favorite place to spend an afternoon?

There is a little café right by the airport, named Fantasy Palace. I love how the walls are painted warm orange, and there are cute little tables, and plants. The plants are fake, but it still looks nice. Their pastries are delicious, and I order my tea, in a mug, not in a paper cup, and a slice of pie, and I feel I can be anywhere in the world. It is a special feeling—knowing where you are, and yet knowing you could be anywhere. I can’t wait for my belated birthday present to arrive, a laptop. I want to cozy up by the window in Fantasy Palace and write.

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Contact Ania

Read:

“Snowrise”
published by Per Contra

“Friendship/Love”
published by SmokeLong Quarterly

“Three Memories of Rain”
published by Cezanne’s Carrot

“I cut him a peony, I left the door unlocked”
published by Verbsap

“Through the Looking Glass”
2nd place in the Dangerous Alice contest at Mad Hatter’s Review

“Elvis is Always Watching”; “Geometry of Love” and “Bus to the Zoo”
published by FRiGG

“Evdokija’s New Name”
published by Buzz Words

“Sunrise”
published by flashquake



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