Posted by: Gail Bowen - author of the Joanne Kilbourn series

The Derrick Murdoch Award, awarded for ‘contributions to Canadian Crime Writing’ is one of those ‘lifetime achievement’ awards that makes the recipient check her pulse to make certain she’s still in the land of the living. Well, I am, and glad of it. I’m also glad to have received this particular award because it’s encouraged me to reflect on the changes in Canadian crime writing since my first Joanne Kilbourn novel appeared in 1990.

When Deadly Appearances was published there was an advertisement promoting Canadian crime writers. It consisted of mug shots of writers like Howard Engel, Eric Wright, Medora Sales and Alison Gordon. I think perhaps the total number of writers represented was ten. I would love to see a similar ad promoting Canadian crime writing today - not just because our numbers have grown exponentially, but because those mug shots would reveal some significant facts about us as Canadian crime writers. We are a diverse group: male and female; gay and straight; young and old; rural and urban. We come from widely divergent ethnic and religious backgrounds. We are from every part of Canada and we write about every part of Canada. Collectively, we give the world a significant literary picture of what it means to be a Canadian in the year 2009. That is no small achievement.

When Derrick Murdock, after whom the award is named, began reviewing crime fiction for The Globe and Mail, the books that came across his desk were primarily written about places other than Canada. This is no longer the case. To write simply about Canadians and Canada would be parochial and impoverishing but not to write about ourselves would be to contribute to the problem Margaret Atwood identified in her seminal work, Survival. In that book she used a powerful metaphor to illustrate the need for a national literature. Atwood asked what would happen to a person who every morning looked into a mirror and was given back a reflection of someone other than herself.

Through our work, Canadian crime writers have given readers here and throughout the world images of the Canadian identity in all its diversity and vibrancy. This, too, is no small achievement.

In the almost two decades since my first book was published, perceptions about the calibre of Canadian crime fiction have changed radically. When my second novel Murder at the Mendel was published in 1991, I appeared on a panel with a number of other academics. Our topic, if I remember correctly, was “Do Mysteries Matter?” The consensus seemed to be that they did not. One of my sister panellists said that she regarded women who wrote crime fiction as akin to the 19th century women who painted china. She believed that neither those 19th century china-painting women nor 20th century mystery-writing women had the courage required to attack the big canvas or the serious novel.

Canadian crime writers are no longer regarded as practitioners of a lesser art. Our books are now on the curricula of universities throughout the world. Theses and learned papers are written about us, and we are regularly reviewed and discussed by thoughtful readers who value our contribution to literature.

Last week I received an email from two young female academics asking if I would write an introduction to a book of essays on Canadian Detective Fiction. The book will be published by Wilfred Laurier Press, a publisher of serious and handsome books. The young academics made a point of noting that their book will be “the first in the field”. In my opinion, it’s about time.

Posted by: Gail Bowen - author of The Brutal Heart

In Robertson Davies’ Fifth Business, the hero Dunstan Ramsay reflects on life and chance. “When life pushes you in a certain direction,” he says, “it’s spiritual suicide to resist.” I’ve always felt these were words to live by.

I’d never considered being a Writer in Residence, but last January, my home province, Saskatchewan, was deep in the miseries of the mother of all winters, so when a friend forwarded the Toronto Reference Library’s ad for a mystery writer in residence, I felt a cosmic nudge. The position started on May lst, and I was going to be in Toronto, reading at a function for World Literacy on April 29th—synchronicity. The nudge became a push and I applied. When the email asking if I would accept the position arrived, I answered with the concluding words of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy: ‘yes I said yes I will. Yes.”

I am still fervently enthusiastic about my position. Like all good contracts, the contract between me and the library is clear about our mutual rights and duties: I am to devote 60% of the residency to a work in progress and the remaining 40% to reading and assessing manuscripts submitted by the general public; counselling individuals on their submissions; conducting writing workshops; participating in an online chat and in a Crime Writers of Canada event and attending the opening and closing receptions for the residency. The library is responsible for giving me a place to work, a person with whom to work and a cheque.

Almost halfway through the residency, I have read submissions from 30 writers, arranged for appointments with all of them, met with ten and participated in a reception, a reading, a workshop and an on-line chat. My paycheque will come at the end of the month, but the Reference Library has honoured their first two commitments with whipped cream and cherries on top.

My office, on the fifth floor of the Reference Library, is the Arthur Conan Doyle room, a book-lined space that houses the library’s Conan Doyle collection. The room is large and gently lit; the furniture is period, and the ambiance is bygone London. Peggy Perdue, the special collections librarian with whom I work most closely is, like another famous citizen of bygone London, ‘practically perfect in every way’. Peggy protects my time; is there when I need her and trusts me to do my job. She’s smart, funny and lovely—the ideal companion for a writer in residence.

During the 60% of the residency allotted for my work-in-progress, I have worked on my next Joanne Kilbourn mystery, “The Nesting Dolls”. I’m pleased with my progress, but I think the real value of my time as Writer in Residence is found elsewhere.

Several years ago I was invited to the Banff Playwrights Colony. In his welcome to us, the Director said “we don’t measure the value of this program by what you produce in the next few weeks. If you want to stand on Tunnel Mountain Road and look at the mountains, do that. Somewhere down the line, what you experienced here will find its place in your work.”

In the month we’ve been in Toronto, I’ve been to two operas (one shimmering; one fusty); learned from my neighbour how to keep growing bok choy safe from racoons (first under inverted vegetable crispers; later under an elaborate system of bricks and discarded oven racks); heard A.S. Byatt and Michael Ignatieff read; seen Niagara Falls; mastered the Toronto public transit system (well almost); learned the best place to buy coffee in Kensington market; witnessed a superb production of “Sunday in the Park with George” at the Shaw Festival and become a temporary member of the congregation of St. James Cathedral (where I worship next to a genuine Tiffany stained glass window and listen to homilies delivered by a warm, brilliant and very young female priest of Chinese descent).

Thanks to Robertson Davies and the Writer in Residence Program of the Toronto Reference Library, I have been uprooted and transplanted, and like my neighbour’s bok choy, I am thriving.