According to Newfoundlander Edward Riche, no writer is an island. The award-winning novelist is making the trek from St. John’s to the mainland to read from his latest piece of fiction The Nine Planets. Riche is stopping in Halifax on October 27 to read at the Dalhousie University Club.
“I’ve dared myself never to read the same thing twice,” says Riche. “Since I’ll be reading in the context of a university I’m going to read the very satirical elements of the book, sections dealing with English as a language and the act of writing itself. I’m going to be very self-indulgent.”
Riche’s wild pen seems to sink its ink into everything. He gained attention with his debut novel Rare Birds, which shortly afterward was adapted into a film starring Molly Parker, Andy Jones and William Hurt. The Nine Planets received 2004’s Winterset Award and 2005’s Thomas Raddall Atlantic Book Award. His co-creatorship of and musings for The Great Eastern radio program received a Writer’s Guild of Canada Award and CBC’s Vice-President’s Award.
“The Great Eastern was my happiest time,” he says. “In radio you have such an intimacy with your audience; it’s like your whispering in their ear.”
These days Riche is keeping his work somewhat secretive. We do know he’s crafting It Shows Beautifully, a television show based on real estate agents in Nova Scotia. He’s also been conjuring up his next work of fiction, a novel based around an imaginary place in uptown New York. This is a departure, as both his previous novels take place in St. John’s.
“I draw a lot of inspiration from the place I live,” he says. “Although I am a skeptic, as my stock-in-trade is satire. There is something inexplicable about Newfoundland. I basically came of age during a cultural renaissance, as there were actual geniuses at work like Ron Hynes and Andy Jones.”
Riche hails from Botwood, though he considers himself a St. John’s townie—an east-ender, to be precise. Not only does he currently reside in St. John’s, he feels the city continuously shapes who he is.
“I’m in it and it’s in me,” says Riche. “St. John’s is the central part of my imagination, but as I get older I do spend more time away. Currently there is a saturation of artistry coming out of Newfoundland. Before it was sort of a death rattle, we were like fruit trees about to die. The economy was decreasing, we thought the island might disappear. And not to sound flippant, but rural Newfoundland is becoming extinct. I suppose it’s all an instinct of survival.”
Initally Riche never believed himself to be a writer—he started studying chemistry then moved on to to film school. He began to shape his craft during his academic years at Memorial University while writing for the school paper. While he was at Concordia University he started writing plays and scripts.
“I’d never thought about novel writing,” he says. “I started writing Rare Birds and thought ‘Hey, I can finish this.’ However, being a full-time writer in Canada is not exactly feasible. People are reading less and less, but novel writing is pretty much all I would do if I could.”
In his earlier days Riche’s literary influences were writers like Kurt Vonnegut, although today he is primariliy interested in British writers like William Boyd and Shakespeare.
“I know to say Shakespeare is a bit trite,” he says. “But he should be everyone’s influence, as he’s the voice of God on the page.”
That voice has some work to do to reach the author—he writes at home in a little nook that is the smallest room in his house.
”Basically I write in a closet,” he says. “Although I do find walking meditative, this is similar to the act of writing. I figure out a lot while I’m walking my dog.”
Edward Riche, October 27 at main dining room, Dalhousie University Club, 7:30pm, free, 494-3615.
This article appears in Oct 27 – Nov 2, 2005.