Carla Gunn’s writing has been featured in the Globe and Mail, The National Post, The New Brunswick Reader and heard on CBC radio. From her publisher’s website: “Along with writing, she teaches psychology and she worries. About everything. But especially climate change, mass extinctions and that mole that she can feel but not see.”

Her 2009 debut novel, Amphibian, about a nine-year-old, environmentally conscious, ahead-of-his-years-and-peers Green Channel addict, has had an amazing year and deserves all of its due attention. She’s emerged as one of Canada’s exciting new voices, and lucky for us, she’s at work on a new novel already. Amphibian was shortlisted for the prestigious Commonwealth Writers Prize (Canada and Caribbean Region) — a career-affirming pat on the back like few others — along with being A Globe & Mail top five debut novel of the year, a National Post Book of the year, being featured in the Quill & Quire best of 2009 edition, a Canada Also Reads nominee, and has garnered a striking abundance of rave reviews, in addition to landing itself onto countless other best of 2009 lists, (like Salty Ink’s, click here). Amphibian is also set to be translated into German and published by Verlag Random House. Click here to read more about Amphibian at Coach House Books’ website, and click here to read Salty Ink’s glowing review of Amphibian.

“Sometimes you start reading a book and fall in love by page two. That’s what happened when I tore through Carla Gunn’s novel Amphibian. The book’s narrator, nine-year-old Phin Walsh, is an encyclopedic pint-sized worrier … it’s a sparkling, memorable debut.” – The Coast

“Carla Gunn has fashioned (more likely been possessed by) an irresistible voice. I confess this kid grabbed me from the top and held me in tender thrall.” – The Globe & Mail

“’One of this year’s most original literary creations is Phineas Walsh, the nine-year-old narrator of Fredericton author Carla Gunn’s polished, engaging first novel … Phin is a “symbol for our times – a child so overwhelmed by information that his childhood is being stolen from him, Yet Gunn manages to alleviate the intensity that threatens to overwhelm the novel with good doses of humour and hope.” – The Quill & Quire.

Enjoy the wonderful interview below.

Off the top of your head, without struggling for “favourites,” name one or two books you really liked by a fellow Atlantic Canadian author.

 Nights Below Station Street by David Adams Richards has stuck with me for years. It has a very strong narrative voice and I’m drawn to those sorts of novels.  It also takes place in Miramichi, N.B. where I grew up.

How does one go from being an aspiring writer to a published author, any insight? Suggestions?

There’s an episode of the British show Keeping Up Appearances in which Hyacinth Bucket, who had never been on a horse, leads some people she’s trying to impress to believe that she’s a skilled equestrian. When they invite her to ride at their ranch, Hyacinth is unfazed and says, “Well, maybe I can ride. How would I know? I’ve never tried.” I’m a bit like Hyacinth and that’s helped me most, I think. So my advice to aspiring writers: foster a naive optimism. 

What is your favourite part of the writing process? Your least favourite?

Fantasizing and imagining what my characters will do or say is more fun to me than actually writing.  I love listening to people’s conversations and plucking little bits out to seed a scene. I don’t like the final stages of the editing process because by that time my work is so familiar to me that I’m utterly bored by it.  

What is great about being a writer? What isn’t so great?

I like the autonomy that comes with writing and with the other forms of work I do. It’s comforting to know that if I piss someone off, they’re out of luck. If I were a capuchin monkey, they could punish me by withholding bananas or by biting off my fingers or toes, but in this capitalist system where money is the primary form of power, they don’t have much recourse since I have so very little to lose – as evidenced by my income statements. The downside to writing is that I have very little to lose – as evidenced by my income statements.

What’s the most unexpected question you’ve had in an interview or talk about your novel?

One reader at a book club meeting in Ontario asked – in a very challenging manner – if I belong to the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.  That surprised me…kind of.

What is taking up too much of your time lately?

I try to cobble together an income with a patchwork of contract jobs and that often interferes with writing.  Most irritating, though, are those pesky things I do for free because I’ve gotten into this mentality of being some sort of subsidization service (anyone who does contract teaching at a university in Canada knows what I mean by that). After a week of not having time to write, I get really cranky and bitter and David Adams Richards’ advice to writers becomes more and more attractive: “Burn your bridges.”

Where did the idea for this book come from? Did Phin come first, or did the idea come first, and a nine-year-old narrator felt like the right way to deliver the story?

When my son was nine, he jumped off his bike to pick up a plastic bag and yelled, “Don’t people know sea tortoises choke on this?!” This happened just around the time I decided I should try my hand at fiction. It really was the perfect motivating event since I’m passionate about environmental issues and gravitate to child narrators.  As soon as I had the theme and a rough idea as to the protagonist, Phin’s voice became louder and more insistent with each scene I wrote. I enjoy that feeling of being possessed because then writing feels like some sort of weird altered hypnotic state instead of hard work.

What I found so effective in using Phin to deliver this story, and all of its environmental concerns, was that children see the world in right and wrong, they do not have that grey zone we adults create by justifying our actions or plain ignoring social and environmental issues. Was this in some part why you chose to use a child narrator for this story?

Yes – and partly because I find children a lot more interesting than many adults. Children haven’t been entirely “socialized” so they’re more likely to clearly see some of the illogic and inconsistencies in the adult world. And because their perspectives are so fresh and interesting, we’re compelled to listen to them.  Some readers say they loved Phin because he gave voice to their own fears and concerns about the environment, while other readers who aren’t particularly interested in such issues liked him because he was funny and insightful – they could forgive his righteousness because of his age.  I don’t think this book would have worked with an adult protagonist, or even an older child.

The book is jammed full of enlightening, random animal facts and stark stats about environmental issues, particularly about endangered species. How much research was involved here? What were your sources?  When one of my sons was younger, he found a lot of fiction creepy (I tried once to read Roald Dahl’s The Twits to him and he was totally freaked out by how mean they were to each other and asked, ‘Didn’t they ever hear of a divorce?’), so he tended to gravitate to the decidedly less disturbing (!) realm of real life.  Animal encyclopedias were his favourite and that’s where I got a good start on accumulating Phin’s information.  I loved the research part of writing this book – so much fun to learn that some lizards can squirt blood out of their eyes and sea cucumbers can throw up their guts on predators. 

I’ve read you are at work on a new novel, Nuts. Is it too soon to tell us a little bit about it?

It’s narrated by a thirteen year old, Sam, who’s baffled by his father’s seemingly bizarre behaviour – like spending all of his time building some sort of secret device in the back shed and taking scything lessons.  When he discusses his concerns with his best friend and his mother, they have all sorts of unpleasant theories. And although his mother scoffs at Sam’s hypothesis that maybe it’s a brain tumour, given the alternatives, that’s what he’s rooting for.  In a nutshell, ‘Nuts’ is about social alienation and disillusionment and what qualifies as ‘disordered’ in present-day society. Now all I need to do is burn some bridges so that I have time to write it…