Torture and twisted human souls have places geographic and places cognitive. People travel to these places in body and in mind.
Adrienne Fitzpatrick has given herself over to these places -- specifically a former Nazi concentration camp -- in her rendering of impressions and landscapes in The Earth Remembers Everything, the story that won her the 2011 John Harris Fiction Award.
The city's top literary citation was handed out Monday night at a full house in the Stan Shaffer Theatre at the College of New Caledonia.
Fitzpatrick took her actual travels to the Nazi death camp, and other sites of historic murder, and wended it into creative prose.
"I am not a travel writer; I am more of a literary writer who uses travel as a writing tool," she told The Citizen.
Fitzpatrick was born in Prince George, grew up in Vanderhoof, and spent the bulk of her adult life wandering the world (China, Viet Nam, Czech Republic, etc.) for school and personal growth before moving back relatively recently, still going to school (UNBC).
Fitzpatrick read an excerpt from the story at the event, but had no spare copies for the many purchase requests that followed her win. She promised to have copies available soon, so watch local bookstores.
This is the second annual John Harris Fiction Award event and with its age came substance.
The 2010 award was $250 won by Alex Cryderman (who was a guest reader on Monday night), but this year's winner got $1,000 as a reward thanks to a mysterious benefactor.
"An anonymous donor approached us and committed $1,000 per year for four years, to get the John Harris Fiction Award off to a good start," said event organizer Graham Pearce of the CNC English Department where Harris was a fixture from the time the college first opened until his recent retirement.
Harris was on-hand for the event Monday night, and did a feature reading.
"My writerly advise is not for the faint of heart, but writing is not for the faint of heart," he said, beginning a recitation of a story rooted in real life.
It was his chronicling of the angst at CNC over the building of the University of Northern British Columbia. The frequent peels of laughter were dressing for a bitterness still fresh over the handling, by both institutions, of the newer facility's formation in the early 1990s -- all painted into a partially fictionalized but reality-rooted literary account.
Harris's lesson was that fiction must be true, to some extent, and doing the writer's job correctly should necessarily put the author in uncomfortable emotional positions.
"John's writing is funny in its soulfulness," said Pearce, prophetically at the start of the event. "It pulls off the scab of bullshit to get at the nerve of truth."
This was the quality judges found in this year's winning story.
The 2011 John Harris list
Thirty-two entries were submitted to the 2011 John Harris Fiction Award competition. Those were shortlisted to
- Alex Buck, Sirens
- Rachelle Durand, The Colour Orange
- Nanette Farella, Pura Vida Costa Rica. Pura Vida!
- Adrienne Fitzpatrick, The Earth Remembers Everything
- Kirsten Gjerde, Nicolas
- Stephanie Holm, The Neighbour Under My Bed
- Paul Strickland, Transitions
