Elizabeth Renzetti

It all began in a small sod hut on the Prairies .... no, it didn't. It began with my failure to do well in math, which led to journalism school, which led to the Globe and Mail, which led to interviewing dozens (hundreds? it felt that way sometimes) of authors, which led to this run-on sentence that would have caused my first journalism professor to cut off my typing digits.In short, I was one of those kids whose best friends were fictional characters. I walked into poles regularly because I read as I walked, and I was a better reader than a walker.Then I was a journalist, first in Toronto and then in Los Angeles and London for the Globe and Mail, sometimes known as the Mope and Pail, Canada's national newspaper. All along, I continued to find ways to interview writers and study their alchemy from up close. How did they manage to turn the dull stuff of everyday life into the gold I read on the page? It seemed like something only a magician could do. It seemed like something I could never do.Yet somehow I did, and there's a novel with a very bright pink cover to prove it (Based on a True Story, House of Anansi, June 2014). It's a comedy. Or a tragi-comedy. I wish there were a better way to encapsulate laughter with bitterness, or disappointment, at its core. I wish I could coin such a word, the way Tyra Banks, in her genius, has given the English language "smize" (smile with your eyes.) If anyone has such a neologism at hand, please let me know. In the meanwhile, read. Enjoy. The two should be synonymous.