Another week, another BOOKSPO pairing. I’m so excited to bring you my conversation with Shawna Lemay all about how a chance encounter with Annie Dillard’s PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK at an Edmonton bookshop in the 1990s created a path that’s led all the way to here and Lemay’s latest book, the essay collection APPLES ON THE WINDOWSILL.
Shawna talks about the notion of pre-internet books, why she likes seeing the world with her camera, how APPLES ON THE WINDOWSILL is an indoor book (not a single muskrat!), what Annie Dillard has to tell us about still-life, and what we can learn from the still-lives on our kitchen counters. This conversation is a celebration of the extraordinary ordinary, and I’m so happy to share it with you!
About APPLES ON THE WINDOWSILL:
Apples on a Windowsill is a series of meditations on still life, photography, beauty, and marriage. Full of personal reflections, charming anecdotes, and the history behind the art of still lifes, this lyrical memoir takes us from Edmonton to Rome to museums all over North America as Lemay discusses the craft of writing, the ups and downs of being married to a painter, and her focus on living a life in art and in beauty. A must read for fans of The Flower Can Always Be Changing, Everything Affects Everyone, and Rumi and the Red Handbag.
Shawna Lemay is the author of The Flower Can Always Be Changing (shortlisted for the 2019 Wilfred Eggleston Award for Non-Fiction) and the novel, Rumi and the Red Handbag, which made Harper’s Bazaar’s #THELIST. She has also written multiple books of poetry, a book of essays, and the experimental novel Hive. All the God-Sized Fruit, her first book, won the Stephan G. Stephansson Award and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Calm Things: Essays was shortlisted for the Wilfred Eggleston Award for Non-Fiction. She lives in Edmonton.
Episode Three: Shawna Lemay