10 Questions with Lindsay Zier-Vogel
Though Lindsay and I have never met, we have an almost-scary number of things in common; not only did we graduate from the same writing program, but we had the same thesis supervisor, the brilliant Canadian poet and novelist Anne Michaels. We both grew up dancing, though she far more seriously than I. And although I first met her work in the form of her un-put-downable novel Letters to Amelia, I recently learned that she is also a picture book writer! Her debut picture book, Dear Street, is forthcoming from Kids Can Press in 2023 just like me! We each have two young children, and I have found so much resonance in Lindsay’s reflections on carving out dedicated space and time for her writing amidst the chaos and demands of family life.
Lindsay is also the creator of the incredible Love Lettering Project, “a community engagement project that asks participants to write letters about what they love about where they live”. Since 2004, thousands of people all around the world have participated in more than 250 events and placed-based writing workshops as part of the project.
Lindsay Zier-Vogel is the author of Letters to Amelia (Book*Hug Press, 2021) and the Creator of The Love Lettering Project. She is also a grant writer, educator, and mother of two.
Photo by Phillipa Croft
1. Were you a particularly bookish child? Were there particular books that spoke to you growing up? Was writing an important part of your childhood?
Lindsay: I definitely was a bookish kid. My parents were both big readers, my mom was a kindergarten teacher, and our house was always filled with books. I was enthralled by the Anne of Green Gables books, but would read literally anything. In the summers, we’d go to my grandparents’ cottage and the librarian at our local library would break the 30 loans only rule and let me take out as many books as I wanted and it was always a highlight of my year.
My mom used to make blank books for me as a kid and it was my favourite. In Grade 3, we had a publishing unit, where we had to write, illustrate and publish a book. I created “The Day the Fish Caught Me”—a creative non-fiction work—and I still remember the moment I saw it bound and opened up the pages to my typed-out words. It was transformational and was the moment I wanted to be a published author.
Kate: There is so much I want to say about all of this! My mom was also a kindergarten teacher, and hearing her chant “Alligator Pie” in my ear is perhaps my earliest and strongest literary memory. I feel so lucky to have inherited her classroom library, in addition to the books from my own childhood bedroom that my mom saved for me.
You are not the first, or second, or even the third person I have interviewed that has cited Anne of Green Gables and its sequels as foundational texts. I feel like maybe there is a project there—an anthology of Canadian Writers talking about why and how those stories embedded themselves so deeply within us. Hmm...
Your comment about the transformative power of book-making with kids really strikes a chord with me. I had a teacher in grade four who did this with us, and the books still sit on the shelf in my office. They are bound with cardboard covers wrapped in wrapping paper and brass butterfly tacks. The pages inside are printed on a dot matrix printer and include some very bad illustrations. One is a blatant rip-off of the Jolly Postman books. I was so, so proud of those books, because they were just that—real books!—and I, by extension, was a real writer.
After I finished grad school, I was an intern at what was 826 Seattle, a writing and tutoring center in Seattle, now called The Bureau Of Fearless Ideas. Creating opportunities for students to hone, publish, and share their work was key to the approach of that organization. They would hold launch parties for student publications, complete with readings and champagne glasses of milk. It was magical, and it forever impacted my approach to working with young writers.
2. Before you were a professional writer, you were a dancer. I also studied dance growing up, though never anywhere near as seriously as you did. I took lessons in tap, jazz, and ballet at a local studio like so many kids do, and it became clear fairly quickly that I was objectively not great. What really had a lasting impact on my life, though, was the dance program that was offered at my high school, all the way from grade 10 right through OAC. It was taught by an incredible woman named Michelle, who introduced us to modern dance, as well as poetry, feminism, and so much good music. We used to go on field trips to Harbourfront Centre in Toronto after school to see modern dance performances, and that was so formative for me. Every year, we would create a two-hour show—not a recital, but a collection of pieces organized around a central theme or narrative. While I did also have some fantastic high school English teachers who taught me how to read critically and passionately and how to write better-than-average five-paragraph essays, there really weren’t a lot of available opportunities to learn how to write poetry or fiction. So, I took what I understood about composition from dance and applied it to creative writing—I began writing poems and stories that were structured in the same way I would structure a movement piece. The two forms became inextricably linked for me. Which is an incredibly long-winded way of asking you what, if anything, connects your writing practice to your past experiences with dance? Are they totally separate animals, or are there parallels?
Lindsay: I began writing poetry and doing contemporary dance around the same time in high school, and they’re definitely connected for me—they’re both non-linear, non-narrative, and imagistic. I had an amazing Writers Craft teacher who encouraged all of us to really delve into our passions, so I created a dance-and-poetry final project that really allowed me space in both worlds.
I found the lack of written language in my professional dance training really challenging, so I wrote a lot of poetry then, and used it while I was choreographing. I even worked as a “poetic dramaturge” in my 20s—writing during choreographers’ creative processes to help guide and shape the work.
I haven’t danced in 21 (!) years, but writing and dance will forever be linked for me—after I was too injured to dance, I worked for a dance magazine, I wrote for So You Think You Can Dance when it came to Canada, and now write a lot of grants for dance artists. I had no idea how connected writing and dance could be when I first started dance school.
I’m not sure how much it factors into my current creative writing practice, except that it is such a huge part of me as a person and artist, and that I’m always thinking about bodies and postures and the way people move.
3. Most writers have day jobs or side hustles of some sort. Trying to find the right day job—or combination of day jobs—that will be fulfilling without sucking too much time and energy from your own writing can be so key. Your full-time gig, as I understand it, is writing grant proposals. You also teach writing workshops for young people. Can you talk a little bit about why this particular combination works for you, and how it impacts (or is impacted by) your creative writing?
Lindsay: I started grant writing as a choreographer, and for fellow dancers. Often dancers’ language is movement, not words, so I found myself a niche in being able to write about dance from the inside. And then I realized that I was able to translate ideas from any art form (and for non-profits) into written language.
I find grant writing so complementary to my writing practice—where writing novels (for me) takes years and years, and so many drafts and rewrites, grant writing has very clear word counts, and very explicit deadlines, so I get the satisfaction of being done projects in a way that is elusive in my writing practice.
I also love the storytelling nature of grant writing—each application is a series of little narrative problems to solve. I just love that. And as a freelancer, I can take on as many projects as I want given my other writing work (I mean, in theory, I always take on too many grant writing projects!). I also teach writing—though not in person for the last few years. I love exploring the writing process with people who aren’t self-defined writers, people who are interested, or even reluctant storytellers. It’s so fulfilling to see people find their voice, and uncover their story’s momentum.
4. Writing can be a lonely and soul-crushing business, which is why the first thing I would tell anyone interested in giving it a go is to find themselves a great critique group. It is so helpful, both in terms of developing your craft and also propping you up and pushing you forward when all you want to do is quit. Can you talk a little bit about the role critique groups or relationships with other writers has played in your own writing life?
Lindsay: Oh my god, what would I do without my writing group? I really don’t know. We are called the Semi-Retired Hens, a name pulled from one of Julia Zarankin’s essays (that is now in a bestselling memoir, Field Notes of An Unintentional Birder!) We meet monthly, and it’s always just so inspiring. It gives me space to experiment with ideas and get immediate feedback, so I don’t fall down a rabbit hole that doesn’t work. The deadlines force me to polish work and have an external deadline, and most of all, it is so, so helpful to be workshopping and reading in-process work. Being able to articulate why a character isn’t developed enough, or why the pacing isn’t working in their work acts as a mirror for my own writing. Reading published books is of course so formative and helpful for writers, but for me, reading in-process work has been infinitely more helpful as a writer.
5. What rituals sustain you as a writer? Tell us about your work space. How about snacks? What’s in your cup?
Lindsay: I write in the mornings, before my brain is too full of to-do lists and work-work. From April to November, I work in my uninsulated sun room office, that used to be bike and stroller storage, but I put a patio couch in and it’s my favourite corner (and has a door that locks, which is a beautiful thing in these pandemic times!). When it’s too cold to work there, I work from my bed, with a cup of hot coffee.
6. I usually read books with a pencil in my hand or stuck through my bun, ready to underline or star any passages that spark some response in me. There is one particular line from one of Amelia Earhart’s fictional letters in your novel that resonated so strongly for me that it sent me digging for a highlighter to mark it properly:
“It’s strange, isn’t it, all the places we keep close, even though its been years sometimes since we’ve been there?”
It is a little bit curious, in a way, how a book about a woman who spent her life in the air has such a strong sense of place. Can you tell me a little bit about your choice to feature Toronto, and to a lesser extent Newfoundland, so prominently in this story? For me, the setting was part of the novel’s magic; so much of Grace’s Toronto felt familiar to me because I lived in that part of Toronto for so long. As I read, I found myself mapping all the places where the geography of my own history bumped up against Grace’s, just as she traces the points where her story overlaps Amelia’s. But were you ever worried that rooting it so strongly in Canadian settings might make the book less marketable, particularly to American publishers and audiences?
Lindsay: One of the most compelling parts about Amelia Earhart’s story for me was her connection to Toronto, so I always knew the story was going to be set here. In the writing process, it didn’t even occur to me that the book might be less marketable to American audiences, but while we were doing line edits and wondering about some very Canada-specific thing, my publisher said that we should trust our audiences wherever they are reading from. I love specificity in books, and to turn Toronto into a generic city to make it more acceptable to Americans would be doing the story, and my readers, an injustice.
7. While Letters to Amelia brilliantly captures a sense of place, it also captures a very particular time of life—what it feels like to be in your early 30’s, trying to figure out what you want your adult life to look like, deciding how marriage and parenthood, homeownership, and a career will or won’t figure in. As Grace struggles to decide what she wants and how she is going to make that work, she is surrounded by the alternative hopes and dreams of her parents, her (ex) partner, her friends, and even Amelia. Over the course of the book she is comes to chart her own course, one that is different from the life her mother chose, but also different from Amelia’s. Can you talk a little bit about this aspect of the story, and perhaps about what the process of finding your own version of adulthood was like?
Lindsay: I think there’s a lot of power in those early-30s. It’s a really powerful and potent time, when decisions have higher stakes than they would’ve before. I love the weight of all of that.
I still very much feel like I’m figuring out adulthood (and am not sure I ever will), but in retrospect, I, like Grace, made some decisions in my early 30s, about who I wanted to be with, and who I wanted to be, that have shaped me tremendously. Of course, this is all only clear in hindsight. Inside it, it was all a big mush, but I made choices about who I wanted in my life, how I wanted my life to look. I started taking ownership of my decisions, in a way that Grace also did, in a way that I hadn’t earlier.
8. You just finished up a month-long stint as writer-in-residence at Open Book, during which you posted several insightful and inspiring articles about writing. Your piece “‘Write While the Baby Sleeps’ and Other Impossible Writing Rules,” actually brought me to tears because it felt so close to home. Like you, I worried constantly as a new parent that if I didn’t figure out a way to finish a book I would end up “just a mom,” and yet actually writing anything that felt on par with what my former classmates were producing felt impossible. I avoided alumni events like the plague because I felt like I was living in a different world and I was embarrassed to have made so little progress.
At the same time, it was also motherhood that eventually gave me the courage and sense of urgency to finally commit to writing in a real way. As my girls grew older, I became more concerned with modelling what it looked like to be a woman who took risks than I was about whether or not I would fail. I eventually learned how to squeeze every second I could out of the small pockets of time I could steal while my kids were napping, or in the bath, or watching their 35th episode of Daniel Tiger. Ironically, I found I was able to accomplish more that way than I ever did while I was childless with large blocks of free time at my disposal. This is a super power that you seem to have thoroughly mastered. I love, love, loved your interview on the Library Land Loves podcast entitled “Getting Shit Done With Children in the House,” where you talk about how you have made time and space for writing before and during Covid, despite not having childcare. What are your top tips for trying to write as a parent of small children?
Lindsay: I write in the mornings, before my kids’ voices get too loud (volume-wise, but also psychologically). My partner does breakfasts and gets them dressed and ready for school during that time. It’s not to say that I’m not interrupted a thousand times, but I aim for solitude!
I remember a well-meaning writer a few years ago telling me that I’d never be able to write with one-hour chunks, but it’s all I have, with not enough childcare, and work-work, and lately, a pandemic. I’ve gotten really good at being focused in my writing windows. I put on the same music, wear the same clothes, and sit in the same spot, so that I can trick myself into believing that it’s just a seamless writing moment.
I also try to not work when I’m sick, or when I haven’t slept. I try to find joy in the process, and remind myself that I get to write, instead of that I have to write. This small language shift has been huge for me.
9. I was beyond thrilled to learn you also have two picture books forthcoming from Kids Can Press! I am so curious how you found your way into picture book writing, particularly since I have heard you describe yourself as a writer who is better suited to long form fiction than to short forms?
Lindsay: I have a community art project, The Love Lettering Project, that I have been doing since 2004, where I ask people to write love letters to their communities and hide them for strangers to find. I originally began writing a non-fiction placemaking book about the project, and about how to connect with one’s community, but it ended up feeling like such a slog. I took a break from forcing myself to work on it during the Christmas holidays a few years ago, and I realized instead of capturing the project in an adult non-fiction book, it needed to be a picture book about a little girl named Alice who writes love letters to her community and hides them for strangers to find. The book appeared very quickly and I wrote the first draft in less than an hour. Of course, I’ve spent a lot more time on it since, but there’s something so lovely about writing in much shorter forms.
I find it takes a long time for picture book ideas to percolate, but then the first drafts don’t take very long (unlike my novels which take years). Like with the short forms of grant writing, I love going back and forth between an elephant-sized, unwieldy novel, and the tight, compressed form of a picture book, which provides respite and a sense of accomplishment.
10. What foods brought you the most comfort as a child? How about now?
My mom made amazing food when I was a kid—meatloaf, homemade mac and cheese, spaghetti and meat sauce, corn bread and chili, gnocchi in a rose sauce, something known as “mish mash” that was ground beef, corn, and who even knows what else. These very suburban white 80s foods are still my go-to comfort meals.
Kate: This sounds very much like the food I cook all the time for my own family. Chili and corn bread is my daughter Zoe’s favourite meal, requested every birthday, while Mae’s is mac and cheese with hot dog coins mixed in. I have also recently discovered the joys of frozen breaded fish fillets, served with white rice and peas, which is the only meal everyone in our family loves without exception! Please consider yourself as having an open invitation to dinner anytime you please (especially if you bring the “mish mash!”)
