Mayor in residence

Latest University of Winnipeg Writer-in-Residence offers a hand to other writers

Chandra Mayor.

Daniel Crump

Over the next few months, if you find writer’s block setting in, you can seek help from the Mayor. Chandra Mayor that is. While University of Winnipeg English professor Catherine Hunter is on research leave until July, Mayor is keeping Hunter’s office warm with literary ideas and vivacious laughter.

She is the ninth guest filling the role of the Carol Shields Writer-in-Residence. Begun by Shields’ husband Don in 2004, the residency offers a writer the opportunity to work on their craft while providing readings and lectures to the public, and assisting any writers with concerns about their writing.

Her laughter belies the raw gravitas of her written work. “My work is dark so I don’t have to be,” she explains. Her tenderness towards others is palpable, as she explains that her thought-process for a poetry reading is to never end on an emotionally devastating word.

The position is not Mayor’s first at the university. She completed a degree in English and Women’s Studies here, an accomplishment she calls her “beautiful dilettante degree.” That period of time saw her working on the publication of a literary magazine called Dark Leisure. There was also a year when she acted as Vice President Advocate of the University of Winnipeg Students’ Association, in addition to being a copy editor at The Uniter.

It’s also not her first time winning an award in memory of the author of Larry’s Party and other masterpieces. Her second book, a novel titled Cherry, won the Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award in 2005.

Mayor believes creativity is enhanced when we respond to the things that stimulate us, even if those things are considered ludicrous. “We live with a great deal of uncertainty,” she says of writers.

“Part of the function of a poem and part of the magic of a poem is that it articulates something that we felt to be true but didn’t know how to say. And once you read that poem you have that recognition and realize ‘Ah! My god! I know what that is!’ And you have a way to articulate it, and then we can go ahead and articulate more. And to me, fairy tales function in similar kinds of ways.”

Currently captivated by fairy tales, she reflects that this opportunity is a tale borne of the fantastic. 

“These writer-in-res gigs are the golden treasure in the fairytales because there’s just so much flexibility for the writers. And it really, really, really is a precious and beautiful opportunity to sort of breathe and not have to hustle, and really be able to focus on writing and engaging with writers.”

Published in Volume 68, Number 17 of The Uniter (January 22, 2014)

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