He’s made the shortlist for the Governor General’s Literary Award, and local playwright Robert Chafe heard the news the fastest way news travels these days: Facebook.
“I was on Facebook, and I actually saw people congratulating (fellow nominee Kathleen Winter). I thought, ‘Oh, that’s great — the Governor General nominations are out, I should see who’s nominated in the drama category,’ because it’s a very small community and I would know some of them. I went looking, and my name popped up,” Chafe said.
Winter has been shortlisted in the fiction category for “Annabel,” her story of a hermaphroditic child growing up in Labrador in the 1960s. The novel is also nominated for the Scotiabank Giller prize and a Writers’ Trust Award.
Chafe is playwright and artistic associate for Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland, and this is his second time on the award’s shortlist: a collection of two of his plays, “Tempting Providence” and “Butler’s Marsh” was nominated in 2004. This time around, it’s “Afterimage,” Chafe’s adaptation of a short story by Michael Crummey.
The play premiered in Toronto last spring, and had a successful run in St. John’s early this past summer.
“The story is a beautiful investigation of community and belonging,” Chafe said. “It’s a story about a family of misfits that’s formed after a worker with the power company has an accident and gets electrocuted and severely disfigured by his burn. It takes place in Buchans, and he’s tended to at the local hospital by a woman who, in her spare time, is a fortune teller. People are afraid of her and freaked out by her, and he’s an outcast, and because of this guy’s appearance, he becomes an outcast as well.
“They end of up having a family, and two of the kids are like their mother, but the third is normal in every way. Because he’s accepted into the community, he feels like the black sheep in his family.”
Michael uses electricity as a metaphor for social and family connections in the piece, Chafe explained.
Although Chafe and director Jillian Keiley included Crummey as much as possible in the adaptation and production, Chafe said Crummey insisted they could do what they liked with his story. Chafe particularly appreciated that when it came to the development of a couple characters who are mentioned in the original story, but not fleshed out.
“They were named and there was very little other information about them, but these are characters on stage with a full history and life, so that was left to me,” Chafe said.
“Michael is unbelievably generous and welcoming to change and the adaptation of his work, and he was really excited about the process and to see the spins we put on it.”
Chafe emailed Crummey, who is in India, to tell him the news, and he was “thrilled.”
“Really, this nomination belongs to the three of us: myself, Jill and Michael. I really feel that,” Chafe said.
St. John’s native Richard Greene has been nominated for the award in the poetry category, for his third book, “Boxing the Compass.” The book contains some new poems, and others that are about 25 years old.
“I was on Facebook, and I actually saw people congratulating (fellow nominee Kathleen Winter). I thought, ‘Oh, that’s great — the Governor General nominations are out, I should see who’s nominated in the drama category,’ because it’s a very small community and I would know some of them. I went looking, and my name popped up.” - Local playwright Robert Chafe
The longest poem in the book, “Over the Border,” was singled out by the award judges.
“It’s about a time when I was travelling a lot in the United States, just after 9/11, and I was going by Greyhounds and Amtrak, and was having all these strange conversations with people. It’s essentially a portrait of the United States from the seat of a bus and the seat of a train,” Greene told The Telegram.
His work has changed over the past two decades, he said, since he’s become better at material descriptions.
His devotion to poetry comes from a love of writing about emotion.
“It’s emotive living. It’s a way of being. It’s how you respond to things,” he said. “You suddenly feel something, and it’s important to write about it.
The Governor General’s Literary Awards honour the best English-language and the best French-language books in each of seven categories: fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, children’s literature (text), children’s literature (illustration), and translation.
Each winner will receive $25,000 and a special leather-bound copy of his or her book.
The publisher of each winning book will receive $3,000 to support promotional activities. Non-winning finalists will each receive $1,000 in recognition of their selection as finalists. The 14 winners will be announced at La Grande Bibliotheque de Bibliotheque et archives nationales du Quebec in Montreal Nov. 16.
tbradbury@thetelegram.com
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