Frances Itani

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Frances Susan Itani , CM (born August 25, 1942 in Belleville , Ontario ) is a Canadian writer and poet who has won several prestigious English-language literary awards, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the "Ottawa-Carleton Book Award". She was honored with the Order of Canada for her contribution to literary culture .

Life

Frances Itani was born in Belleville, Ontario and grew up in Québec . She trained as a nurse in Montreal and at Duke University in North Carolina (1965). She completed her first degree with a Bachelor of Arts in psychology . As a nurse, she taught and worked for eight years at Ottawa Civic Hospital. However, after enrolling in a creative writing course in Edmonton at WO Mitchell, she decided to change careers and see writing as her profession in the future. She graduated from the University of New Brunswick with a BA in English and a Magister artium in English Literature in 1981 . Her fellow student friends at the time were Audrey Thomas , Danuta Gleed , Gabriella Goliger, Bryan Moon and Rita Donovan. Together with Susan Zettell, she prepared the posthumous publication of her short story collection One of the Chosen (1997) for Gleed, who died early in 1996 .

Itani has published eighteen books to date, ranging from fictional subjects, poems, essays to children's books . Some of the novels belong to the genre of the educational novel , to another part they can be counted in the broadest sense of the genre of the historical novel .

After three decades in which she was already recognized as a well-known local literary greatness in Canada with her poems and short stories, she grew to international greatness with her first novel Defeaning (2003), on which she worked for six years. She was then able to sell the US book rights to Grove Atlantic for at least $ 275,000, while it was worth $ 500,000 to the British publishing house Hodder Stoughton.

Her novel Defeaning (2003), which uses the biography Grania O'Neill, a young deaf woman, to describe the painful experience of Canadians returning from World War I , won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Canada and the Caribbean and was up to published in seventeen countries to date. The book was shaped by the experiences of her own maternal grandmother, Gertie Freeman, who became deaf at 18 months and with whom Frances Itani was particularly close. When she started her research in 1996, she had originally only wanted to write a novella that the memory of her grandmother, who was still called "Granny", was to honor the memory of her 60 years old. But after the first archival studies at the Sir James Whitney School for the Deaf in Belleville, Ontario, which Gerie Freeman had attended, she preferred to tell the story of a young woman who grew up during the first two decades of the 20th century. In doing so, she inevitably had to delve into the history of the First World War. The Canadian literary magazine Quill and Quire described her research technique as that of a " method actor ". She visited the battlefields of the War of Attrition across Europe , spent a summer poring over daily newspapers and front letters from the War Museum of Canada , and learned the North American sign language when she volunteered at Ottawa Deaf Center worked and interviewed deaf people on an ongoing basis.

Her bestseller novel Remembering the Bones , in which she recalls the life experiences of an 80-year-old woman from Ottawa who died in an accident, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize and has also been published in various countries. It has already won the CBC Literary Award three times and the Ottawa Book Award twice.

France Itani is a reviewer for the Washington Post and has written essays for The Globe and Mail , The Walrus, Canadian Geographic , Saturday Night, The Ottawa Citizen, and other North American journals and magazines. She is also on the Advisory Board for Youth in Motion's' Top 20 Under 20 . She has also repeatedly taught creative writing at the Banff Center, worked in the Leighton Artists' Colony, and was involved in the Banff International Literary Translation Center.

Her latest novel, Requiem , tells the story of the Japanese visual artist Bin Okuma reviewing his own past and that of his family in the context of the Canadian internment camps for Japanese during World War II . So far, three works by Itani have been transferred to German.

Frances Itani lives in Ottawa and is married to Ted Hill, with whom she has two children. In earlier years, due to her husband's professional activity with a focus on Geneva, she lived temporarily in England and Croatia , here in Yugoslavia during the war , and then later moved to Germany .

In addition to her mother tongue, she speaks French and German. To keep herself physically fit, she hikes a lot and practices Taijiquan for 17 minutes a day .

Style and motifs

Itani's preferred work motif is the visualization of human behavior, as she describes in the foreword to her collection of short stories Poached Egg on Toast (2004): “No matter what the story, my interest is in the human condition, the perpetually amazing range of struggles and delights that make up human behavior. ”-“ Regardless of the story, I am interested in the human circumstances, the constant astonishing range of resistances and joys that make up human behavior. ”

Itani reported on the side of her colleague Gail Anderson-Dargatz , who has been friends with her since her literary beginnings , that she would always fine-tune her lines in order to gradually achieve perfection. For example, she promised her publisher the next manuscript for 2013, but due to her own perfectionism it would certainly not become until autumn 2014: “One of the ways of working at this is, of course, by rewriting. Reworking every sentence. Reading aloud dozens of times. Hundreds, if necessary. Changing the beat. Adding a beat when one is not expected. Pulling back, farther and farther. Making the work more concrete. Leaving room for the reader to stride in and take hold of our story as if it's one s / he is experiencing rather than one held at arms' length. I don't want to keep my readers somewhere off in the distance, looking in from outside. Our readers are our willing partners. ”-“ One of the ways to work on the texts is of course to rewrite them. Revise every sentence. Read the text aloud dozens of times. Go back again, on and on. Make the work more concrete. Leave space for the reader so that he can fit into the story and present the story to him so that he can at least participate at arm's length. Our readers are our willing partners. "

As a working motto, the writer keeps a quote from Willy Loman's wife from Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman on her desk: "Attention must be paid."

Reviews

  • “ Deafening presents a unique dual adventure, delving simultaneously into the world of deafness and the horrible carnage (and explosive din) of trench warfare. ”
  • "Contrary to expectations, the Canadian author Frances Itani managed to penetrate this strange cosmos of absolute noiselessness in her first novel with the title Deafening , in which language and thought, meanings and concepts, images and sounds reach their natural limits."
  • “ Requiem is an exploration of the places history is stored: letters, art, music, literature, and the human body itself. It's also an expertly crafted sketch of a sympathetic character's vivid, complex, and subtle life. ”

reception

A comparative literary scholar found that Frances Itani, along with Gail Anderson-Dargatz , Andrew Pyper and Kerri Sakamoto, are among those modern Canadian authors who, in contrast to Michael Ondaatje , despite a benevolent critique in the press, did not have a corresponding sales success in the United States because changes in the post-colonial Canadian literary scene have not been registered by US literary scholars.

plant

Poems
Children's books
Short stories
Novels
as editor
  • Danuta Gleed: One of the Cosen. Ed. Frances Itani, Susan Zettell, BuschekBooks, Ottawa 1997 ISBN 0-9699904-3-X
as a co-author
  • with Carol Shields , Gwendolyn MacEwen, David Lewis Stein, Tom Marshall, Bonnie Burnard, Elizabeth Spencer, Nora Keeling, Héléne Holden, Robin Mathews, Audrey Callahan Thomas, Mavis Gallant : 84 best Canadian stories. Ed., Contributions by David Helwig, Sandra Martin. Oberon Press, Ottawa 1984 ISBN 0-88750-545-7
  • with Sheila Delany, Judith Pond: Coming attractions. Short story collection. Oberon, Ottawa 1985 ISBN 0-88750-592-9
Essays, reviews (selection)
  • Looking Into the Eye of the Whale. In: Journal of Canadian studies. Revue d'études canadiennes, 30, No. 4, 1995, p. 152 ff.
  • Books in Review - Authors Reviewed. In: Canadian literature, 173, 2002, pp. 186 ff.
  • with Alan Cheuse, Wanda Coleman, Russell Banks : Off the air - Reviews. In: World literature today. 82, No. 4, 2008, p. 13 ff.

Awards and nominations

  • 1987: Canadian Fiction magazine, Category: Best Short Story, for After the Rain , 1987
  • 1994: "Ottawa-Carleton Book Award for Fiction" for Man Without Face
  • 2003: "Drummer General's Award for fiction" for Deafening
  • 2004: Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book (Caribbean & Canada region) for Deafening
  • 2005: Shortlist of the "William Saroyan International Literary Prize" for Deafening
  • 2005: Shortlist International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award , for Deafening
  • 2006: Deafening was added to the Canada Reads shortlist.
  • 2006: Une coquille de silence , the French translation of Deafening , was included in the selection of Le combat des livres .
  • Member of the Order of Canada .

literature

  • Diana Chlebek: Canada. In: Journal of Commonwealth Literature. 45, No. 4, 2010, pp. 511-539.
  • Amy Elisabeth Fuller: Contemporary authors new revision series. Volume 192: A bio-bibliographical guide to current writers in fiction, general nonfiction, poetry, journalism, drama, motion pictures, television, and other fields. Gale, Detroit 2010 ISBN 978-1-4144-5673-7
  • Marilyn Herbert: Bookclub-in-a-box presents the discussion companion for Frances Itani's novel Deafening. Bookclub-in-a-box, 2nd edition 2007 ISBN 978-1-897082-17-1
  • David Staines, Bronwen Wallace: Journal of Canadian poetry. The poetry review for the year 1988. Borealis Press, Ottawa 1990 ISSN  0705-1328

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ David Staines, Bronwen Wallace: Journal of Canadian poetry: the poetry review for the year 1988. Borealis Press, Ottawa 1990, ISSN  0705-1328 .
  2. ↑ a b c d Frances Itani: Lines. On: gailanderson-dargatz.ca. July 2012. Retrieved July 4, 2012
  3. ↑ a b c Frances Itani ( English, French ) In: The Canadian Encyclopedia .
  4. ↑ Diana Chlebek: Canada. In: Journal of Commonwealth Literature. 45, No. 4, 2010, pp. 511-539.
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g Anita Lahey: Frances Itani. Getting it right. In: Quill & Quire . Canada's Magazine of Book News and Reviews. July 2003. Retrieved July 4, 2012.
  6. ↑ Marilyn Herbert: Book Club-in-a-box presents the discussion companion for Frances Itani's novel Deafening. Bookclub-in-a-box, 2nd edition 2007, ISBN 978-1-897082-17-1 .
  7. ↑ www.banffcentre.ca . Retrieved July 4, 2012.
  8. ↑ Brief introduction and review overview of Frances Itani on Perlentaucher.de .
  9. ↑ Natalie Samson: Review to: Frances Itani: Requiem. In: Quill and Quire. Canada's Magazine of Book News and Reviews. October 2011. Retrieved July 4, 2012.
  10. ^ Nicholas Birns: Theory after theory. An intellectual history of literary theory from 1950 to the early twenty-first century. Broadview Press, New York 2010, p. 252
  11. ^ Short biography Susan Zettell . On: signature-editions.com. Retrieved July 2, 2012
  12. ↑ cbc.ca
  13. ↑ Short biography on HarperCollins' publisher's website ( Memento of the original from January 28, 2013 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. . Retrieved July 4, 2012 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.harpercollins.ca
personal data
SURNAME Itani, Frances
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Itani, Frances Susan; Itani Hill, Frances Susan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian writer and poet
DATE OF BIRTH August 25, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Belleville , Ontario