Ayelet Tsabari

I’m excited to be teaching a fiction workshop next weekend (May 17th to 21st, 2012) as a part of the Canadian Authors Association’s Conference that will be taking place in Orillia. The workshop is titled: The Rules of Fiction (and How to Break Them), and it’s a topic that is close to my heart. I have a complicated relationship with rules (any rules, really, but fiction rules in particular) and last year I wrote an essay about my journey with the rules of fiction for my MFA plenary course. Maybe I’ll post excerpts from it here one day….

If you’d like to attend the workshop you can sign up here. You don’t have to be a member of the CAA. The conference offers many other great workshops and master classes (read the description here) and it’s promised to be a great weekend.

On Sunday, April 22nd I’ll be participating in the Draft Reading Series.  It’s an afternoon event, starting at 2:00 PM (and I’m reading first!) at the S. Walter Stewart Branch  of Toronto Public Library (170 Memorial Park Ave.1 block north of Mortimer Ave, 2 blocks west of Coxwell). I’ll be reading with my lovely and talented friend Eufemia Fantetti (who recently won second place in Accenti Magazine writing contest!), as well as Susan Glickman, Amy Lavender Harris, and Lola Lemire Tostevin.

April 22nd also happens to be the anniversary of my father’s death, and I can’t think of a better thing to do on that day. Though I won’t be reading from it, the Draft publication (a little booklet available at the event) includes a small tribute to my father: an excerpt from a piece I wrote about him and a poem of his I translated. You can read a little bit about my father in this post here.

I had a smooth landing in Toronto, and though it didn’t really make my goodbyes any easier or less sad, I am happy to be home. My Pivot reading went well: Sandra Ridley and Rebecca Rosenblum both gave fantastic readings, and I finally got to meet my new best friend whom I met on Twitter recently, fabulous fiction writer and avid blogger Amanda Leduc who shares my book-birthday-season: her novel will be coming out with ECW in Spring 2013!

I also had my first official interview the other day and it’s already up on ShalomLife.com. I think I managed to not sound like a complete idiot, which is a relief. And I got to use one of the head shots my friend, the brilliant Elsin Davidi (we served in the IDF together; if you want to read about some of the shit we stirred during that time read You and What Army), had shot of me in The Yemeni Grove neighbourhood in Tel Aviv. It was strange being the subject rather than the photographer... but I knew I was in good hands. Read the interview here.

My time in Israel is getting shorter and I’m starting to feel sad about saying goodbye to my family and friends. Every visit is the same: my departure date sneaks up on me, so I end up spending my last week running around the city with a sense of urgency, trying to cram as much quality time with loved ones as possible into my day.

Luckily, I have two readings to look forward to in Toronto. On March 21st I’ll be reading at the Pivot Reading Series at the Press Club on Dundas, with Sandra Ridley and Rebecca Rosenblum (great company!) The event will be hosted by the lovely Elisabeth De Mariaffi. I will be landing at Pearson Airport less than 48 hours before the reading, so you should come and have a beer with me to soften my landing and celebrate my homecoming. I’m hoping it will help alleviate the inevitable heartache (an emotional jetlag?) I experience whenever I leave Israel for Canada , and remind me of the Toronto literary community I love and miss when I’m away. It’s also the first day of spring. More reasons to drink and be merry.

Then, on April 22nd I’ll be participating in the Draft Reading Series. The Draft Reading Series specializes in new work so I guess I’ll be reading something brand new. Maybe I haven’t written it yet. The event will take place at the S. Walter Stewart Branch  of Toronto Public Library (170 Memorial Park Ave.1 block north of Mortimer Ave, 2 blocks west of Coxwell). I’ll be reading with my lovely and talented friend Eufemia Fantetti, as well as Susan Glickman, Amy Lavender Harris, and Lola Lemire Tostevin.

Yesterday I went to Granta magazine’s launch in Tel Aviv. When I first heard about it, it felt a little bit like worlds colliding. A few months ago I went to a Granta launch in Toronto; the issue then - Ten Years Later – featured a beautiful story by a friend, Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer, and the bookstore in which it was held, Type Books on Queen Street (my favourite bookstore in Toronto) was so packed that we had to stand at the top of the stairs, leaning against the door, and listen to the readers without actually seeing them. Kathryn wrote a great blog post about submitting work to Granta for nineteen years before finally receiving an acceptance, and the post had inspired me to subscribe to Granta – a magazine I was familiar with but figured I needed to read more of – and to submit to Granta (I received my first rejection from them shortly after that.)

But Granta in Tel Aviv? That seemed a bit strange. Sure, I knew that Granta launched their issues in different cities around the world. And of course I knew there is a thriving literary scene in Tel Aviv (a scene I’m not a part of and wouldn’t know how to infiltrate, after living away for so long). But this wasn’t your everyday Tel Aviv’s literary scene, this was Tel Aviv’s literary scene in English! I was thrilled to check it out.

Granta 118, titled Exit Strategies, looks like yet another great issue, with essays by Aleksandar Hemon and Claire Messud and stories by Anne Tyler, Daniel Alarcón and Alice Munro. I can’t wait to read it when I get back to Toronto. The Tel Aviv launch took place in Sipur Pashut, a lovely bookstore in the picturesque Neve Tsedek neighbourhood in Tel Aviv, and it was, just like in Type in Toronto, completely packed. The event included a reading by Jacob Newberry, who is currently in Jerusalem on a Fulbright Fellowship in Creative Writing, and he read from his beautiful and moving essay, Summer, about four gay friends in post-Katrina Mississippi.  (Read an interview with Jacob about his ‘pilgrimage’ to Israel here).

The other reader, Daniel Weizman, gave a dramatic reading of an excerpt from a story by Judy Chicurel, City Boy.  Daniel, I found, is a student at the Graduate Program in English and Creative Writing in Bar Ilan university, on the outskirts of Tel Aviv! I never knew such thing existed in Israel! Some of the attendees that night were clearly students from that program, and as I walked around the room with a glass of warm punch (perfect for a chilly Tel Aviv evening) I heard them speaking  in American English about MFA’s and PhD’s, genres and workshops, literary mags and book deals. As I said: worlds colliding. It was just like being at a literary event back home. I mean, my other home.

It was a bit surreal to be there. I think a part of me was hoping to feel like I belonged in that scene. After all, I now write in English. But at the end, I felt a little bit like an outsider: I no longer live in Israel and I’m not an Anglo, like most of the people who came last night –  immigrants and visitors to Israel who write in their mother tongue in my hometown…  It’s the same old story: as an immigrant you’re bound to feel like an outsider everywhere. Nevertheless, it was a great evening and I’m so glad that I was able to be there for the first-ever Granta launch in Tel Aviv. Maybe if I continue to attend Granta launches in different cities around the globe then one day I’ll get to actually read in one. It may take nineteen years, but that’s okay.

I had such a great time reading at the Real Vancouver Writers’ Series Second Anniversary event.

I love Vancouver. I lived in this city for eleven years, eight of them in East Van. There is nothing quite like East Van anywhere, and for someone like me, that sense of community and belonging in a city half a world away from my home was not something to take for granted. My life in Vancouver was very contained: I worked on Commercial Drive (at Yogis, then at Clove), met Sean on the Drive (drinking coffee and smoking outside Napoli cafe), lived off the Drive (Charles Street, William Street, Napier Street, and Semlin Drive). My favourite coffee shop had a coffee after my name (single shot latte in a cappuccino cup, also known as the Ayelet); the guys at the corner store remembered what I smoked; Teresa knew how I liked my eggs; my regular bar had my name—spelled correctly—programmed into their computer so that it said table number: Ayelet on the bill (hmmm. Maybe this isn’t something to be proud of). Every time I walked down the street there was nodding and smiling and how are yous involved. It used to take me two hours just to go to the corner store for smokes (it’s a good thing I quit).

Vancouver is also where I started writing in English, and where I became a part of a writing community and a literary scene. In 2007 I got accepted into the Writer’s Studio. I walked into the first orientation day at SFU a nervous wreck, muttering something about being ESL, and how I wasn’t supposed to be there; it was all a mistake. My year at the Writer’s Studio was life changing. I was lucky to work with Wayde Compton as my mentor, and with the director of TWS, Betsy Warland, who believed in me and showed me endless support. During my year at the Writer’s studio, the impossible happened: I won Event’s creative non-fiction contest. Then, at the end of that year, we got to read at the Vancouver International Writers’ Festival, put up an anthology edited by Nancy Lee (also an amazing teacher). We formed writing groups (I’m still in touch with mine), friendships that lasted, not just from my cohort but from other cohorts as well.

I’m happy I live in Toronto now. By the time we moved, I needed a change and I love Toronto, my new home and my new writing community and friends. Still, coming back to Vancouver is always so great. I still miss it—the mountains, the sea, the fresh air—but mostly I miss the people: my East Van friends and my writing community, who welcome and embrace me every time I come back, making me feel as though I never left.

I have two readings coming up in Vancouver. Tonight, January 13th, I’m reading at the Writer’s Studio Reading Series at Take5 Cafe downtown (my very first public reading was in that series!) Then, on Tuesday, January 24th, I’m reading at an event I’m really excited about: the second anniversary of W2 Real Vancouver Writers’ Series, which was launched during the Vancouver winter Olympic in 2009. I was already in Toronto during the Olympics, and I was pissed off that I was missing out on all the great cultural events that were happening in the city, so I’m really pleased to be a part of this event. And the line-up—as Sean Cranbury, the curator, put it—is ridiculous. I’m reading alongside Angie Abdou, Zsuzsi Gartner, David Lester. Arley McNeney, Garry Thomas Morse, and Jen Neale. Humbled. It’s going to be a great night!

Holy shit! I got myself a book deal!

My book of short stories, The Best Place on Earth, will be coming out with HarperCollins in 2013. I have a contract signed, an editor assigned, and a cheque with my name on it. It’s for real.

People ask me how it felt, getting that email inviting me to the HarperCollins offices for a ‘chat.’ Did I scream? they ask. I totally screamed. I also cried a little bit. I played Matisyahu in my office really loudly and did a silly dance. I called my mom, my mentor in Toronto (Camilla Gibb), my mentor in Vancouver (Betsy Warland). I smiled like a fool on the subway on the way to my meeting. I kept smiling like that for days. Then I freaked out. I borrowed ‘How to be your own Literary Agent‘ from the library and spent hours researching on the internet. I actually had to cut down on coffee because I was having anxiety attacks.

I wanted to be a writer ever since I had learned the alphabet. As a kid, I filled school notebooks with stories and poems, then created a cover and a jacket, glued a pocket on for a library card, wrote a synopsis on the back and a short bio: Ayelet Tsabari is eight years old and goes to Hes Elementary in Petah Tikva.

Then, for my tenth birthday, my father promised he would publish my writing in a book.

“A real book?” I asked.

“A real book,” he said. “Just put together your best writing.”

I knew my father used to write too. A nosy kid, I’d found scribbling in his bedside drawer, parts of poems, unsent letters. His handwriting fascinated me, quick and elegant, artfully drawn and rounded with long strokes, always in black ink. At the bottom of the drawer, I found a yellowing magazine from 1967, titled Afikim, in which his poem was featured, his only publication.

My father was a second child to a poor family of eight siblings: my grandparents had immigrated from Yemen to Israel in the 1930′s. He had studied for his high school graduation exams by the street lamp outside his house because their home had no electricity. He started writing in 1959 and wrote for an entire year, winter and summer. His verse was in eloquent, proper Hebrew; his love poems to my mother paid homage to King Solomon. Yet he never really dared to envision a future as a writer. In one of his poems he wrote:  “A poet’s craft is an artist’s realm / not for you, son of Yemen.” There were no published Yemeni poets in Israel at the time. Our celebrated poets were all Ashkenazi. When my father gathered his courage and handed the poems to his literature teacher from high school, the teacher critiqued them harshly, littering my father’s notebook with red ink. My father was discouraged. He concentrated on his law studies and abandoned his literary aspirations.

Aba and I

Only in his forties, a father of six and a successful lawyer, my father finally decided to follow his dream and signed up for literature studies in the University of Tel Aviv. He never got to attend them. He died a month before my tenth birthday.

Looking back now, I’m not sure when my dream of becoming an author had gotten away from me. I don’t know if the fact that my father wasn’t there to cheer me on had something to do with it, or if I simply had let doubt and insecurities get the better of me, the same way my father had.

As a reluctant soldier in the IDF, I wrote a book of linked short stories about unhappy female soldiers. The stories circulated in my unit, passed around between my fellow soldiers. When my friends asked why I didn’t send them to publishers I told them it was too soon. I was too young. No one ever writes an awesome book when they’re nineteen, I said (which I know now to not be true).

In my early twenties, I worked as a journalist, and found that writing fiction wasn’t easy to do when you had deadlines piling up. I associated writing with work. When I was done working I wanted to do something else (which is why I quit being a journalist).

Then  I started travelling, and waitressing, and travelling some more. Eventually, my travels brought me to Canada. Writing in English, then, seemed impossible. Writing in Hebrew in a world where no one else knew the language felt alienating. It used to be that people could guess that I’m a writer by how I spoke. In English, my vocabulary was limited, my verb tense faulty, my sentence structure all wrong. I even found reading in English difficult; there were so many words I didn’t understand and reading with a dictionary was slow and frustrating. I worked as a waitress, dabbled in other creative pursuits, mostly photography, but also video, belly dancing, comics, singing, jewellery. Every now and then I’d write something, usually in Hebrew, sometimes in English. Neither language felt completely right. Sometimes I wondered if I’d ever get back to writing and was burdened by an enormous sense of loss. I felt I had owed it to my father to write, to publish that book he had wanted to publish for me. Put together my best writing. But it was too late. I was blocked. Sometimes I wondered if I had lost it for good. The dream was slipping away. Maybe I just had to let it go.

All kinds of amazing things happened after that. I met a man who thought that I had to give writing a real shot. For our first anniversary he demanded a story. I hated him for it. I did it anyways. In English. The story was riddled with errors. He didn’t care.

In 2007, I joined the Writer’s Studio and suddenly I had teachers who cared and supported me, writers like Wayde Compton and Betsy Warland who told me I could do this. I met other emerging writers, heard their stories, and felt I wasn’t alone. I had a community. Then I was accepted to the MFA program at Guelph. I moved to Toronto.

The book deal with HarperCollins happened fast: unusually, freakishly fast. I sent a query letter and within days was already sitting in their glassed office in downtown Toronto, stupefied and underdressed (a picture of my dad tucked in my purse). I felt too lucky (if there is such thing) that it happened that way, guilty somehow that I didn’t suffer more for it, that my work didn’t sit in the slush pile for months. But then a friend reminded me that it hadn’t been fast at all. I’ve been working for thirty years, she said, to get me to this, suffered many setbacks, many rejections, a severe writer’s block, doubts and insecurities, learning to write in my second language.

So I try to listen to my friend, shake off the guilt, be happy and grateful for this gift and for this journey. I remind myself to give back, through mentorship and community support and general, everyday kindnesses, because I know that these are the kinds of things that would really make my father proud, a man who was known in my hometown for his charity and generosity, and because the truth is: underneath this cynical, crusty exterior, I’m just a big ol’ hippie.

I’ll be reading this coming Thursday, November 24^th, 7:30 PM, at Speakeasy Reading Series. That’s right, I’m no longer a host. I passed it on to the new cohort, more specifically to the lovely Naoko Kumagai who now hosts alongside the illustrious Eufemia Fantetti. It was sad to let it go; it was my baby after all, but the good news is that now I get to be a reader! The event will take place at Magpie Tavern, 831 Dundas Street West. I’ll be reading with Adam Honsinger, Judith Thompson, and Paul Vermeersch. Hope to see you there!

So earlier this fall I found out that I had been nominated for the CNFC (Creative Non-Fiction Collective) Readers’ choice Award for my story Warplanes (which appeared in Grain last summer). I was thrilled, of course; it’s a great honour. My dear friend Eufemia Fantetti was nominated last year and the past winners—Susan Olding for Pathologies (2010) and Theresa Kishkan for Phantom Limb (2009)—are both wonderful writers. The award was announced  at the CNFC conference in Banff, where an excerpt from my story was read in front of the collective members by the lovely and generous Betsy Warland.

I didn’t know who won this year or who the other nominees were until today, when I found the information on their website. Turns out I was one of three shortlisted writers: the winner, Eve Joseph, who won for her personal essay “Intimate Strangers” from the Winter 2010 issue of The Malahat Review (which I loved, by the way), and Charles Foran, who was nominated for Mordecai: Life and Times, a book for which he recently won the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for non-fiction, only the largest non-fiction award in Canada! Needless to say, I am humbled.

You can check the collective’s website here, join, and sign up for their listserve, which I am mildly addicted to. The list aims to keep subscribers abreast of issues, concerns, and professional development options pertaining to nonfiction writing. So far I haven’t felt courageous enough to contribute to any of the enthralling, inspiring and thought-provoking discussions that take place in that virtual community, but maybe I’ll get over it one day.

The Wolsak and Wynn launch at Ben McNally Books was great. I got to read to a bunch of people who came to hear Barry Dempster read from Dying a Little and were forced to listen to some of my army tales first. Susan Glickman also read from Slice Me Some Truth. Wine and brie were consumed. Good time was had by all.

I got my copy of Slice Me Some Truth from Wolsak and Wynn in the mail today and it’s a big, fat, gorgeous book. I’m so honoured to be in it. I’m even more honoured to be included in their fall launch! It’s going to take place this Thursday, September 22^nd, 2011 at Ben McNally Books, 366 Bay Street, Toronto. Barry Dempster and David Groulx read from their new books of poetry, Dying a Little and a Difficult Beauty, respectively, and Susan Glickman and I will read from Slice Me Some Truth. I’ll be reading from You and What Army, which is one of the first stories I wrote in English and the first one I published in a literary magazine (it won Event‘s Creative Non-Fiction contest in 2007). It’s weird to be reading something I had written five years ago… But I still like it and am proud of how far it went.

A little bit about Slice Me Some Truth: Slice Me Some Truth, a ground-breaking anthology of Canadian creative nonfiction, was released in August by Toronto publisher Wolsak and Wynn. The book features the work of 36 writers. Four years in the making, editors Luanne Armstrong and Zoë Landale received over five hundred submissions. As writers and teachers of creative nonfiction, Armstrong and Landale felt frustrated by not having a broadly-based Canadian book in the genre, so they set out to create one themselves.

I am so excited, honoured and proud to be a part of this awesome English textbook. And I know, the words ‘awesome English textbook’ don’t sound quite right… There were definitely no awesome textbooks in my time. This one has graphic narratives and comics and lyric prose and postcard stories and Twitter fiction. I can see high school students actually enjoying their English classes with this one. It’s also an honour to be published along such accomplished authors as Heather O’neill, Kevin Chong and many others that I don’t know but probably should.

Click here to read my teeny little story, Thanksgiving, (and here if you want to read other samples, including  a couple 10-word stories from my dear friend, Becky Blake, who also contributed a wonderful short story to the collection.)

I was an honourary Italian last night! I was invited to read at the ‘Not So Nice Italian Girls Reading Series’ run by the lovely Michelle Alfano and Giovanna Riccio. The theme of the night was hot and seamy (it is August, after all, and we’re talking Mediterranean blood here), so I pretty much just stood in front of a bunch of strangers and read smut. Other readers were the equally smutty (in the most dignified and wonderful way) Elisabeth de Mariaffi, poet Catherine Graham, writer Koom Kankesan, and K.D. Miller. For more photos go here.

I’m reading at this, on August 17th, at the Annex Live.

I received my copy of PRISM in the mail today and I was thrilled to see my story, “Missing In Action” (1^st runner up in their literary nonfiction contest!) in print.

This is what the judge Brian Brett had to say about my story: “’Missing in Action,’ is a dazy druggy classic tale of getting lost in Goa, reverberating, replaying, echoing, chronicling a cleansing of old memories in the exoticism of India. It’s brave not only in subject matter but also in its loose style.”

It’s a great issue, and featuring the winning entries as well as poetry by two of my favourite Vancouver poets Elizabeth Bachinsky and Renee Sarojini Saklikar, and my classmate, the talented Claire Caldwell. Good company, indeed! You can buy it online.

I’ve always wanted to be published in PRISM, but for some reason—maybe because it’s published by UBC’s Creative Writing Program— I saw it as some canlit turf that was beyond my reach. I just assumed that they wouldn’t be interested in my writing, because I wasn’t canlit enough for them (whatever that means). After having three pieces shortlisted for their contests this year (one for fiction, two for nonfiction), and corresponding with their editors, who were extremely supportive and kind throughout the process, I realized that maybe some of it was in my head (shocking!) So thank you PRISM, for being awesome and making me feel like I belong…

My story Casualties is on PRISM International’s short fiction shortlist. I am so honoured! I happen to know that it has not won (no official announcement yet), but I’m thrilled to have made it on to the shortlist. Looking forwards to reading the winning stories!

Open Book Toronto recently published an article about Speakeasy, the reading series Eufemia and I founded and host, calling it “A chattery, fist-pounding, pint-guzzling good time.” The lovely piece was written by Stacey Madden, who graduated from the program last year. Here’s an excerpt:   

“There’s a new reading series on the scene — Speakeasy, brought to you by Ayelet Tsabari and Eufemia Fantetti of the Creative Writing MFA program at the University of Guelph.

Hosted by the Magpie Tavern at 831 Dundas Street West in Toronto, Speakeasy is a monthly event in which MFA students, instructors and alumni alike can showcase their work. It’s a hot place for agents, editors, publishers and all manner of language aficionados to get a healthy dose of literary talent of both the established and up-and-coming variety.

Some of the writers who have read at Speakeasy include Catherine Bush, Russell Smith, Michael Winter, Meaghan Strimas, Paul Vermeersch and Nancy Jo Cullen, along with numerous other students and graduates of the program. I recently spoke with Ayelet and Eufemia about the series, its inception and where it can go from here.”

Read the entire article here.