Charlotte Gill

Charlotte Gill (* 1971 in London , United Kingdom ) is a Canadian author and former Baumpflanzerin , the first with her collection of short stories , Ladykiller , 2006 to the BC Book Prizes belonging Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and the Danuta Gleed Literary Award , and in 2012 with her biographical non - fiction debut , Eating Dirt , the British Columbia's National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction and the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize .

Life

Charlotte Gill was born in London to a medical couple. Her father was of Indian origin and so the family first emigrated to Canada when she was four years old, where she grew up in eastern Canada and from 1979 in the United States . She worked as one of thousands of tree planters for 17 years, first in Ontario , then later in British Columbia , where she resided in Vancouver for 20 years . She herself estimates that she must have planted around a million trees during this time, which is compared to an average harvest of 92 million cubic meters of wood annually, as she herself emphasizes. During her breaks from work in the Backwoods, where the isolation from modern technology would seem like traveling 100 years back in time, she studied creative writing at the University of British Columbia with breaks . She completed this course with a Master of Fine Arts .

Her first collection of short stories, Ladykiller , was critically acclaimed for its ironic comedy and gentle satire. The seven stories ranged from the story of a married couple's struggle against both the noise nuisance of a screaming baby in the apartment above them and their interpersonal problems, Hush , who was shortlisted for the Journey Prize in 2003 , to the fate-laden one Romance between a medical student and her professor. What they all had in common was the contradicting nature of sabotaging their own destiny rather than mastering it. In 2006 Ladykiller won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and the Danuta Gleed Literary Award , which honors Danuta Gleed, and was also nominated for the Governor General's literary award . Her other short stories have so far been published in Best Canadian Stories, The Journey Prize Stories, and other magazines.

She had written the short story collection in an unusual way in isolation from her work and the rare breaks, sometimes without a reliable connection to her publisher: “While finishing Ladykiller, I was treeplanting. I traveled frequently, and my car morphed into a kind of office. I parked in ferry line-ups with my laptop propped against the steering wheel. I wrote during off-hours - usually at 5 am and then again before bed. Now I can recognize the chunks of the book written during these drowsy, dreamy times. I sent manuscript dispatches via e-mail. I called Toronto from bald mountaintops, from satellite phones sheathed in bread bags against the weather. For weeks at a time I was totally unreachable - a pre-publication scenario that would have turned most editors incandescent with anxiety. "

In her debut novel, Eating Dirt , she turned to the working life that had dominated her everyday life for almost two decades: the planting and reforestation of the western Canadian cedar population in the North American rainforest. As a 19-year-old student, she had turned to this work, less tempted by the prospect of good pay ($ 250 to 500 per day), more by the prospect of nature-loving isolation in order to find herself, but also without any Preparation for this physically demanding job. This turn to the topic would only have been inevitable, not only three of her best friends, but also her husband would be former tree planters: “All of my best friends were tree planters, my husband was a tree planter (...). There's just something really incredible that happens in the backwoods when you get away from technology. It's like going back 100 years. ”In this book with clear biographical references, she described everyday life in the remote areas of British Columbia, the personal relationships between the individual actors and the magic of the western Canadian jungle, the biology of trees and history of the west coast forests. The jury praised the style of the prose used in Eating Dirt : "an insider's perspective on the gruelling, remote and largely ignored world of that uniquely modern-day 'tribe,' the tree planter." [Her description] (...) brings it vividly to life in all its mystic grandeur with striking details and evocative analogies, using intelligence, verve and humor to illuminate the dangers that live within, and threaten from without. "

The $ 40,000 Canadian award was officially awarded to Charlotte Gill on February 15, 2012 by Prime Minister Christy Clark and Keith Marschall, directors of the British Columbia Achievement Foundation. Eating Dirt was also nominated for the $ 25,000 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction and the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Non-fiction and the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize . She received the latter award in May 2012. Before the award ceremony, Gill said with amusement that this Monday is usually the tree planter new year , on which they would instruct their new teams on the first day of the season.

Charlotte Gill now lives with her husband Kevin, who now works as a physiotherapist, in the Powell River , around 200 km from Vancouver , because they both lacked closeness to nature, and now teaches herself through the online program of the University of British Columbia’s Banff Center Creative writing. The nature-loving activity in the rainforests, which she gave up in 2008 due to constant knee problems, she misses every day despite the privations. She saw the work itself in terms of nature conservation as part of an ironic machine: “There aren't many planters who don't feel what they are doing is a giant contradiction. We're paid indirectly by the logging companies that harvest the trees. Like loggers, we are all part of the machine. ”One of her literary role models in the non-fiction field was Susan Orleans The Orchid Thief , but her next book project will definitely be in the fiction field again.

plant

Short stories

• Lady killer. Thomas Allen Publishers, Vancouver 2005, ISBN 978-0-88762-177-2 .

Non-fiction

• Eating dirt . Deep forests, big timber and life with the tree-planting tribe. (David Suzuki Foundation) Greystone Books / Douglas & McIntyre, Vancouver 2011, ISBN 978-1-55365-977-8 .

review

Even her short story debut Ladykiller challenged the reviewer Heather Birrell to compare it with Elmore Leonard's quote “If it sounds like writing, I re-write it”: “Many passages in Charlotte Gill's debut story collection, Ladykiller, sound like writing, but this deliberate and persistent stylishness - in combination with her bleak choice of subject matter - might very well be the author's point. "-" Hear many passages in Charlotte Gill's debut short story collection after writing, but her deliberate and persistent style - combined with her rough choice of subject - is well chosen from the author's point of view. "

To eating dirt. Deep forests, big timber and life with the tree-planting tribe , Cherie Thiessen expressed herself enthusiastically: "Gill combines details about her fellow tribe members with her own observations of the land and the job they're tasked with, and blends descriptions of tree planters 'Daily routines with anecdotes about unusual creatures and situations they encounter during their travails. In the hands of these wordsmith, the mundane becomes magical. (...) With Eating Dirt, Gill has produced a winner. Not all of the million seedlings she planted during her two decades in the wild will have thrived, but this book will. "-" Gill combines details about her accompanying tribe members with their observations of the landscape and with the job they are doing , In doing so, she fades the descriptions of the tree planters' daily routine with anecdotes about unusual creatures and situations with which they are confronted during their work expeditions. In the hands of this word smith, everyday life becomes magical. (...) With Eating Dirt, Gill has produced a winner. Not all of the millions of seedlings she has planted over the past two decades will have rooted out, but this book will get it. "

Awards and nominations

• 2006: Danuta Gleed Literary Award for Ladykiller
• 2006: Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize for Ladykiller
• 2012: British Columbia's National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction for Eating Dirt
• 2012: Shortlisted Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction for Eating Dirt
• 2012: Shortlist Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Non-fiction for Eating Dirt
• 2012: Shortlisted Bill Duthie Booksellers' Choice Award for Eating Dirt
• 2012: Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize for Eating Dirt

Web links

• Literature by and about Charlotte Gill in the WorldCat bibliographic database
• http://www.charlottegill.com/ (uses Shockwave)
• Author portrait on ABCbookworld.com
• John Burns: Questions & Answers with Charlott Gill. In: Vancouver Magazine. February 2, 2012. Retrieved April 2, 2012.
• Annotated excerpt from Eating Dirt in: The Huffington Post. April 2, 2012. Retrieved April 2, 2012.
• Interview with Charlotte Gill on openbooktoronto.com. February 28, 2012. Retrieved April 2, 2012.
• Image from the award ceremony

Individual evidence

1. ^ Sarah Hampson: From 'total princess' to tree-planting fanatic. In: The Globe and Mail . March 13, 2012. Retrieved April 2, 2012.
2. ↑ Janet Melo-Thaiss: Visions of Love. Charlotte Gill, 'Ladykiller' . ( Memento of the original from April 3, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Canadian Literature # 193 (Summer 2007), pp. 115f. 
3. ^ From the jury statement for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award : "Ladykiller, is a startling collection of stories that explores some of the darker undercurrents of urban existence. Charlotte Gill's characters - reckless, restless, predatory, self-destructive and stuck in relationships and situations they don't know they've chosen - inhabit a bleak emotional landscape where being angry is the only way they can feel anything at all as they inch towards disaster, unable to stop themselves. Gill writes with skill, flare and a certain hard precision, producing mercurial prose. This is a striking debut. ”Quoted from http://www.abcbookworld.com/view_author.php?id=7748 .
4. ↑ http://www.bcbookprizes.ca/winners/2006#fiction
5. ↑ [1]  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
6. ↑ Charlotte Gill: Life on a distant planet . In: Quill & Quire . January 2006. Retrieved July 9, 2012.
7. ↑ http://www.cbc.ca/nxnw/featured-guests/2012/02/17/author-charlotte-gill-eating-dirt/
8. ^ Viktoria Ahearn: Tree planting inspired Gill. ( Memento of the original from February 29, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: The Chronicle Herald . February 26, 2012. Retrieved April 2, 2012. 
9. ↑ Tracy Sherlock: Vancouver author Charlotte Gill wins BC's national non-fiction book award. Writer's Eating Dirt: Deep Forests, Big Timber, and Life with the Tree-Planting Tribe wins $ 40,000 prize . ( Memento of the original from February 16, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Vancouver Sun . February 14, 2012. Retrieved April 2, 2012. 
10. ↑ Quoted from: Marsha Lederman: Charlotte Gill's Eating Dirt wins BC book award for non-fiction. In: The Globe and Mail . February 13, 2012. Retrieved April 2, 2012.
11. ↑ www.quillandquire.com ( Memento of the original from March 11, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
12. ^ The Taylor Prize nominees: Q&A with Charlotte Gill. In: The Globe and Mail . February 27, 2012. Retrieved April 2, 2012.
13. ↑ http://www.bcbookprizes.ca/winners/2012#non-fiction
14. ↑ http://www.banffcentre.ca/faculty/faculty-member/4277/charlotte-gill.mvc
15. ^ John Burns: Questions & Answers with Charlott Gill. ( Memento of the original from November 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Vancouver Magazine. February 2, 2012. Retrieved April 2, 2012. 
16. ↑ Author Charlotte Gill recounts 17 years spent planting trees. In: The Star . October 1, 2011. Retrieved April 2, 2012.
17. ↑ Interview with Charlotte Gill on openbooktoronto.com. February 28, 2012. Retrieved on April 2, 2012. ( Memento of the original from September 10, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
18. ↑ Heather Birrell: Review of Ladykiller by Charlotte Gill. In: Quill & Quire . April 2005. Retrieved July 9, 2012
19. ↑ Cherie Thiessen: Review of Eating Dirt by Charlotte Gill. In: Quill & Quire. September 2011. Retrieved July 9, 2012
20. ↑ http://www.thecharlestaylorprize.ca/2012/citation_12_cg.asp