From Corporate P.R. to Professional Canlit Fangirl

A Conversation with Hollay Ghadery

HOLLAY GHADERY

is an award-winning, multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir on mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/ Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box, was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024 and was longlisted for the Toronto Book Award. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is a host on The New Books Network, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also the Founder of River Street—a boutique book publicity firm—and the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com. Learn more about River Street at www.riverstreetwriting.com. 

TALI VORON-LEIDERMAN: Let’s start from the beginning and imagine that some of our readers are getting to know you here for the very first time. We’ll touch on all areas of your work, but let’s begin with the publicity side of things. You have over twenty years of experience as a PR, content, and communications specialist and in 2010 you founded River Street Writing. Walk us through what brought you to where you are today; how did you make the switch from corporate PR to book marketing?

HOLLAY GHADERY: I never really thought about working in publishing, mostly because I always assumed that was something somebody else would be better suited to doing than me. I thought people had this specific knowledge set that I didn’t have. It was a combination of not understanding the industry, underestimating my own abilities, not knowing the way the industry was going to change, and not understanding how deeply unhappy corporate PR was going to make me. And I think with anything in life, if you really, truly are passionate about what it is, you can make yourself good at it.
I wasn’t terribly passionate about corporate PR. I did it for years and it definitely paid better. And it could be a lot of work and a lot of bureaucracy. But sometimes there wasn’t a lot of work and there were quiet times. With book publicity, on the other hand, there’s always something happening. There’s always something you can do. The transition from corporate to book publicity happened a few years ago now, when one of my last big contracts dried up and I didn’t really want to renew it. I didn’t want to do anything like that anymore. I mentioned my feelings to a good friend of mine, who is the wonderful historical fiction writer, among other things, Lucy E. M. Black. She also runs Heart of the Story Reading Series in Port Perry. I said that I think I just want to work somewhere that means something to me, like go into communications for David Suzuki or the World Wildlife Fund—something that lets me sleep at night knowing I’m not propping up big corporations who invest in fossil fuels or whatever. I just wanted to do something that wasn’t so soul-destroying.
Lucy had a book coming out and she said, “I think you’d be great for book PR.” And I said, well, I don’t know. Again, it was that detachment from the industry, not feeling like I would know what I was doing. But then I thought about it more. I’ve been reviewing books for years. I had good friends who were in the industry and often shared insights. I knew something of what was going on. I’d also been publishing long enough to have at least a feel for it. I’d been an editor for various literary magazines. I was the reviews editor for the Minola Review. I knew more than the average writer about the industry. My reluctance was founded in a lack of confidence in myself.
But Lucy had believed in me. She offered to hire me. She talked me up to other authors. Basically, Lucy E. M. Black is the reason I moved into book publicity. It only takes one person to believe in you. And that was essentially where it started. My first client was Lucy E.M. Black, and her phenomenal work of historical fiction, The Brickworks.

TVL: Oh, that’s so amazing. And it’s true. Sometimes it really does take one person to believe in you and give you that confidence boost to do what you couldn’t imagine doing before. So, does that mean River Street existed before you transitioned into book publicity specifically?

HG: Yes. It existed for a very long time, probably before 2010, as content creation and communications. We did do things with authors; we edited books, we did some mentorships. It was still very much book-adjacent, so it wasn’t a difficult transition for us to make. We still have a few content-creation clients that we’ve been working with for decades. They’ve been wonderful! They just have nothing to do with books.
So, even before we transitioned to book publicity, we were always talking about books and language. In fact, a lot of our social media content was author interviews and talking about etymology. We often couldn’t talk about the work we were doing with our clients because we signed NDAs. Still, because we were already sharing our love of language and literature all the time, we were halfway there before we made the switch.

TVL: You are the founder and senior publicist at River Street, and work with an incredible team of publicists and copywriters. How did you build your team, and what is your creative and collaborative process like?

HG: I consider everyone on my team my colleagues. For the most part, the people with whom I work are people who have come and asked about working with us. Or people who have come to us highly recommended. We have recently started accepting interns, as well, so there may be a possibility for those positions to turn into more permanent work, but I think it’s important to note that none of us are full-time. I’m close, but I don’t work a standard forty-hour week. Everybody is doing other stuff. I have my own writing projects, and I’m a mentor so that also takes up time, and it’s important for me to make time for it. Other team members work for arts organizations, and other arts-related jobs. It seems one thing we all have in common is that we enjoy variety. What’s more, I find working in these other roles helps me build connections that can inform my work in publicity.
In every publicity campaign we run, there is one lead publicist. Another publicist may come on to support and lend their expertise and we will have a meeting and exchange frequent communications to make sure we are collaborating effectively. I trust the people I work with. I don’t micromanage them. I already have four children. If I’m having to micromanage someone and get too involved with their campaign—other than helping as requested and checking in regularly—that would be a sign of a problem. We share assets, resources, and pitch spreadsheets, and at any given time, we can see what is happening in a campaign. So, while we are aware of what other people are doing, and while we can check in with them directly if need be, everyone who works with us is self-sufficient.
There’s also the structure of how River Street works. We vet every single client we represent, as well as their work, and we are careful to manage each season’s frontlist. When you have too many clients, you cannibalize the opportunities you have for each client. If we have too many poets, then we’re more likely to get people saying no to our pitches about poets because we’re pitching them too much. We try to scale our list back, and we’re very selective. The people I work with are essentially people who are fine with this structure and are fine knowing they will need to be doing something else to round out full-time hours, if that’s what they are looking for. We’re all freelancers. Every publicist at River Street has signed a contract and confidentiality agreements—all the usual business stuff. And there aren’t that many of us. The max number of publicists I have ever had working with us is four. As for the character traits I look for: enthusiasm, respect, and self-sufficiency balanced with the ability to realize when you need to ask a question or have something clarified. I want somebody to come to me and bring value. I cannot hold people’s hands through every little detail. That’s not to say that I can’t mentor someone and help them learn. That’s part of the process, and I enjoy helping people learn—that’s why I also do mentorships and that’s why we have interns. This said, I do need the people I work with to have a base level of awareness of their capabilities and of their weaknesses. And not to be shy. When you’re a publicist, your job is to be extremely schmoozy. I guess “schmoozy” has a used-car-salesman vibe to it. I see myself more like a delicate marshmallow filling that keeps people together. I’m not there to oil my way around. I just want to make people comfortable and share the books I love. And that is what I expect: love the book, be aware of the industry, and believe in the authors and their work. Working in the arts doesn’t pay particularly well for most people. It’s largely thankless, and the demands and expectations are high from everybody. It’s rewarding, but it will only be rewarding if you really love it. You’re not always going to get your flowers. You are not centre stage. The books are. The authors are. You have to love the books and believe in them more than you want accolades for yourself.

TVL: This may be a good moment to ask if you’d like to explain River Street’s business model and how you operate.

HG: Sometimes we work with individual authors, and they can approach us about representing their book. We also work with publishers. Now, the caveat is they must be traditionally published and the publisher and/or author must be Canadian. We don’t represent authors who are self-published, published with hybrid presses, or vanity presses. But if there is a newer press that perhaps hasn’t been around long enough to become a member of (for example) the Literary Press Group, we will still consider representing a book. For example, Jerrod Edson came to us a couple of years ago with his incredible book The Boulevard, which was published by Galleon Books. I’d never heard of Jerrod and never heard of the press. I was wary. I’m ashamed to admit how skeptical I was of the concept of the book, which was Hemingway and Satan on a train ride through Hell to visit van Gogh because van Gogh had painted Hell in the image of Heaven. But now God was coming to check on things, so they have to destroy the boulevard of Hell and go break the news to van Gogh, who is in a delicate state. I loved it. A little lesson: never write off a book based on it sounding like a wild premise. Amazing writers can pull off the wildest premises.
We also tend to only work with books in advance of their publication. There have been exceptions, but they’re based on referrals from people we trust. Expectation management is such a huge part of our work. Writers obviously want the best for their books, but some writers are attached to a relic of what the media industry used to look like and not what it looks like now. All this to say, the simplest way to explain our business model is we work with traditionally published Canadian authors or presses who publish traditional books, and we vet every single book we represent.
Another key part of our business model is our organic content and our community-based approach. Organic content is content that River Street creates and distributes ourselves across social media, blogs, and newsletters. This allows us to guarantee at least some of the opportunities we can offer our clients because we create them. We are also invariably community based. We believe in the ecosystem and trying to make it healthier for everybody. We believe in connecting with readers and helping authors find the readers for their book, which will not be every reader. We believe in championing literary criticism. We have a Reviewer-in-Residence. This position involves an honorarium and the reviewer can review whichever books they want: it doesn’t have to be books we represent. We have a wonderful community built, and we depend on a lot of grassroots efforts because the big traditional media efforts are fewer and further between. We don’t rest on our laurels and we don’t put all our eggs in one basket. We get very inventive with the way that we work, and we’re huge believers in radical reciprocity. We celebrate the people who celebrate our books. We have a feature that’s forthcoming with Shawn Syms, the reviews editor for Plenitude Magazine. He is just a wonderful person to work with and we enjoy the magazine. Many of our authors have been published in Plenitude, so we like to spotlight the people on social media and blogs who spotlight us. Same with Brockton Writers Series. We did a blog with them and a social media shout-out, talking about things people might not know about the reading series and all the effort that goes into curating these events. A lot of authors want to be invited to these places, but I don’t think a lot of us understand and appreciate how draining they are for the people who are organizing them, how much they want to do more, but sometimes they don’t get grants or have volunteers. I think it’s important that as authors we show up as audience members and supporters of these initiatives more than we expect to be featured with them.
So yes, we are book publicists at River Street, but we also want to nurture a more conscious industry awareness among readers and writers, whether it directly benefits us or not. We want people to know what this landscape really looks like. We want to show them how they can help when and as they are able.

TVL: You really do so much for your authors. Like you said, with publicity you’re always thinking outside the box and you’re very inventive with what you do. What is one of your favourite or most memorable publicity initiatives that you’ve undertaken?

HG: One thing that we were doing for a bit were things like Instagram Lives, which were lots of fun. Once the pandemic hit, a lot of really wonderful Instagram Lives were established, like Sarah Marie doing her lives or Jess Taylor’s “Stop the Doomscroll” or Junction Reads’ “The First 30.” Eventually, we started to realize numbers were dropping, and we didn’t want to encroach on the IG Lives that were already established. I think some of our best initiatives were our in-person events where we got groups of our writers together and did pop-up launches and things like that.
There’s also been things like partnering with wonderful places like the On Creative Writing platform, which is run by Sheelagh Caygill, and she started this just of her own volition. It has turned into quite a monster, and we sponsored her writing contest. We sponsor the Toronto Review of Books, which popped up relatively recently, and the St. Lawrence Writers Festival. A lot of our effort—our inventive ways of doing things—are supporting the people and organizations who are already supporting writers. That has been one of the smartest things I’ve done. I used to do things like Instagram ads or Facebook ads, and we spent thousands of dollars a year on these things. I couldn’t tell you if there was any real measurable outcome. But there is a measurable outcome from keeping the existing infrastructure alive. We subscribe to Steven Beattie’s wonderful That Shakespearean Rag, The Quill & Quire, and Catherine Owen’s brilliant review site. If there’s any place we can put money now and then, we will. And it’s not always a lot. I’ve donated five dollars sometimes. But it can make a difference and it supports the infrastructure that’s already there.
When we have the budget, we are also trying to get involved in in-person events at festivals and so on. We were at Word on the Street Toronto in 2025, which was so much fun. We met so many readers. We weren’t there to attract clients. We were solely interested in talking to people who love books, and that is all we did that weekend. We gave out a lot of candy, as well. So much candy. We met amazing readers, and our social media and newsletter communities grew exponentially. We also talked to other publishers, went and visited Magazine Mews and chatted with all the great people who do magazines. I mean, it’s just getting out there in the community, and that’s where we thrive.

TVL: That’s amazing. Your approach seems a lot more authentic and community based, and that also reflects River Street as a whole. We often talk about the importance of the connections and relationships we build in the literary community, and that seems to be the heart of how you approach your publicity work, too.

HG: Yeah, and we try to operate with integrity. It’s not like I have a heavily populated grudge sheet or anything like that, but integrity is one of the reasons we vet books we represent. It doesn’t make us popular when we turn people down. And it’s not always because of the literary merit of the book. Sometimes it’s that they’re getting to us too late. Sometimes it’s not too late, but we’re already booked. Sometimes it’s that we already have too many titles in one genre and we can’t take on one more.
I’ve been called some terrible names by people who aren’t happy with our judgments, but I refuse to lose sleep over decisions I could’ve avoided if I had just listened to my gut. I’m not just going to work on a book because it’s going to make me popular. I’d rather work on Jerrod Edson’s wonderful book The Boulevard, which blew my mind, than a book by a super-mainstream author that doesn’t resonate with me.
When we vet books and when we have meetings, too, with potential clients, we are also vetting attitudes. We have to make sure we can work with these people because we are going to be talking to them a lot for three months. If the personalities don’t match, then we are going to pass on representing the book and spare everybody a lot of unpleasantness.

TVL: Are there any green flags that you look for in authors when going into these meetings, or red flags, like the consistent emails that you’ve seen?

HG: I would say green flags are just being receptive to what we’re saying and realizing they’re coming to us for our expertise. We love it when people show a willingness to listen and learn. We expect the same thing from ourselves: we know there’s always more to learn. We also love it when authors are ready to be an active part of their campaign to a realistic degree: they are enthusiastic but not trying to get overinvolved in what we’re doing behind the scenes, which really only slows us down.
If an author comes to us with a list of complaints about how CanLit has wronged them and they never got the recognition they deserve, then we are probably going to pass on that author. I know the industry is not perfect, but there are already enough obstacles in our way. We need to work with people who are thinking and moving forward. If you don’t like something, then try to change it. We’re working within the broken system and we’re trying to effect positive change, but authors are not powerless, either.
One of my favourite author meetings was Maria Giesbrecht. We hadn’t signed her as a client yet, but she had reached out about the possibility. I was knocked on my ass by her energy. It was contagious. Maria is doing her MFA at the University of Guelph and she’s publishing with WriteBloody Publishing—a U.S. press with a Canadian imprint. She came into our meeting having done her homework. She knew that we usually support Canadian publishers, but that we sometimes made exceptions. She made it clear why she should be an exception. At one point, I was reciting her my usual riot act about poets and poetry and what to expect as a poet (i.e., getting media for poetry is usually more challenging than any other form). Maria listened so respectfully. She said she absolutely understood and she knew this wouldn’t be easy. Then she said—and I’m paraphrasing here—“Listen, I’m delulu and I need you to be delusional, too.” The biggest smile broke my face. What can I say? I’m a romantic. Whimsy is at my core. You don’t need to ask me twice to be a little delusional. So sure, let’s understand the realities and then let’s be a little delulu about what we can do with this. Maria has an Instagram platform of over eighty thousand followers. She runs the Gather Poets group. She’s a beloved poet and poetry community advocate. If anyone’s going to drag me into delusions, it’s going to be Maria. She has the passion, sure, but she’s already proven what she’s capable of.
I’m willing to do almost anything for my clients. I’ve sent poetry books to Chris Hadfield before. I’ve reached out to Sarah Polley’s agent and got her to accept one of my client’s books because my client was positive Sarah would love it. I will do some bold things for my clients if the respect is there. I don’t sign people who show signs of disrespect in the beginning.

TVL: Like you mentioned, you’re incredibly selective in the authors and books you represent. Can you share how you know you want to represent a book and what that means for you?

HG: Some of the decision-making process has to do with those elements I mentioned earlier: we need variety and cannot have too many books of the same genre. We can have a great speculative fiction book come to us, for example, but if nine out of ten of our fiction titles are already speculative fiction, we may have to turn it down. We tend to prioritize small presses over multinational presses or imprints of multinational presses. If we already have a full lineup of small press books, we will decline representing big press books. This year we have three poetry titles from McClelland & Stewart, which is an imprint of Penguin Random House. We were pretty busy, but I was confident taking them because poetry is a different beast altogether. And admittedly I was fangirling a bit over the poets: Laurie D. Graham, Jake Skeets, and Kaie Kellough. And there’s that, too, just being a fan of my authors has absolutely helped me. There are authors I’ve never heard of who reach out, of course. This doesn’t mean they don’t have big readerships. It just means I’ve never heard of them. I can’t know everybody. But if their emails are respectful, clear, they’ve read the website, and they’re not trying to change my mind on our non-negotiable stipulations, I’ll take a look. Again, sometimes my mind can be changed, but it’s almost always by referral that my mind is changed, when somebody vouches for this person and after that, we read their work. We try to be pretty quick with turnaround time because we understand people are trying to nail their publicists down, and it’s not always easy.
The interpersonal stuff is super important. It doesn’t matter how much we like an author’s work if our personalities don’t vibe. This said, the way we feel about the writing itself is also vital. We represent such a wide variety of writers and writing styles that it’s difficult for me to pin down an exact defining characteristic that I look for, but I suppose, broadly speaking, I like to be surprised. I want to read something that, in some way, shape, or form, surprises me. Maybe it’s the language. Maybe the first page knocks my socks off. Maybe it’s an uncommon and powerful central conceit. Maybe it’s a delightful melting of genres. Part of the ability to be surprised is remaining open to it.

TVL: What are your relationships like with the authors you represent?

HG: My relationships with the authors I represent, I hope, are always validating and understanding. I also hope there’s an element where my authors feel they can learn something from me just as I am continually learning from them. I can get hundreds of emails a day, so I’m not going to pretend that on a day-to-day basis I am able to get into deeper industry conversations with my authors, but I try to make room for it as much as possible. I try to help them understand that we receive responses to a small fraction of the queries we send out, and this has nothing to do with the merit of their books. It also probably isn’t because our pitch sucked. Producers and editors are overwhelmed by queries and they are making the decisions they feel are best. Disappointments are inevitable. But we can’t let them define us or how we feel about our own work. I hope my clients always feel support from me and that when they do feel disappointed that they know that I believe in them, even if they’ve momentarily stopped believing in themselves. I wouldn’t have taken on their book if I didn’t think it was amazing.
When I do get emails expressing disappointment for whatever reason, I always try to reply as quickly as I can, because I know what it’s like to sit and stew in these low feelings. I can’t promise to be able to lift them out of their despondency, but I can at least let them know I understand.

TVL: I have to say, you are exceptionally quick with your emails. It’s really impressive. So much of book publicity happens behind the scenes and can be invisible to authors and readers. What is one thing about the publishing industry or publicity, specifically, that you wish everyone knew?

HG: I wish everybody knew how hard-working the editors and producers and volunteers at literary magazines and festivals are. I wish everybody knew how much your publisher believes in your book, and how whether you get accepted for an opportunity doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the literary merit of your book. I say necessarily because I’m placing caveats around myself here, but for the most part, whether your book makes a list or doesn’t, it’s not based on literary merit. It’s not that your book stinks. It’s not that nobody cares. There’s a lot going on in the world. A lot of decisions are made based on how somebody’s feeling that day, what the news cycle is like, what month it is. Some books are just right time, right place, right person. It’s not that they’re better or worse than your book. It’s out of your hands.
I worry about people getting bitter and thinking no one cares. I think we need to live our lives with a little more compassion for the people who are trying to make things work. Not everyone is trying—I’m not saying everybody’s heart is in the right place—but the people who do book media, industry media, reviews editing: they have a lot of expectations placed on them and a lot of pressure that many cannot comprehend. We’re not privy to the inner workings of the reasoning. I think it’s important not to make whether we’re included in something part of our happiness or personality. Try to be respectful of the people and appreciate what they do, and if you don’t like something, ask yourself what you can do to change it. But don’t let your resentment become your defining personality trait.

TVL: I love that. On that note, what would you say is the best way for readers to support the authors and the books that they love?

HG: Talk about them all the time. Talk about them over dinner. Talk about them to your co-workers. Read them on the subway. Take a picture of a book that you love. Request a book into your local library. Talk about it on social media if you’re comfortable doing that. There are thousands of ways to weave books into the tapestry of our culture and our lives. If you have a book club and the author of the book you’re reading is local, invite them to attend, or have them join via Zoom. Volunteer at a literary festival. Donate to a reading series. Buy a subscription to a literary magazine, even just one.
And not everything has to be about money. Look at Rod Carley starting the St. Lawrence Writers Festival; that’s a massive undertaking. I love that they’ve done it, but I’m not saying everyone should or even can do something on that scale. But as a reader or author, you can show up. Share a post on social media. Put a poster on a community bulletin board. Support existing infrastructure. The people already doing the work are often underpaid or unpaid.
There are great podcasts, too. Canada Reads Inspired is one of my favourites, hosted by Rebecca in Michigan and Tara in Ontario. They talk about books they love. Sheelagh Caygill’s On Creative Writing platform and podcast are also awesome, as is Lola Opatayo’s The Journey of the Art, Seamus Woolven’s A Novel Review, and Writers Read Their Early Shit with Jason Emde. Give podcasts like these five stars. Subscribe. Follow. Listen, even if it’s not about your book. Especially if it’s not about your book. Readers who are just readers already do this. But when authors get involved, there’s sometimes an ego that needs to be negotiated with, and that can complicate things. I speak for myself, too. Sometimes my ego muddles my genuine love for books, and I have to swat it away and come back to being a reader first and support the books I love. If I don’t like a book, I don’t talk about it. But if I like a book, everybody within a nuclear-blast radius will know.

TVL: In addition to being an incredible publicist, you’re also an award-winning author and you write across genres. What has your experience navigating the publishing world as a writer been like?

HG: I think it’s reinforced how wonderful the people are who support books. It’s incredible how much editors and publishers believe in their books. These people are chronically overworked and underappreciated, but they show up every day and are devoted to the books. I’ve never had a bad experience with a publisher—and I’ve published with a spread of them, being the irrepressibly disloyal author that I am. I move around. To date, I’ve never been published by the same press twice, though I will be next year; Guernica Editions published my first book and they’re publishing my fifth. But I’m an opportunist when it comes to my own writing. Whoever replies first and gives me a good offer—because I live with existential dread and our time is so brief—is who gets the book. If I’ve sent my book to a publisher, I like them. I’d be honoured to be published with them. So I send a manuscript to my top five all at once and work from there.
In my experience, publishers want the best for their authors no matter who they publish with, which speaks to how wonderful these people are. I’ve never once had a publisher say, oh, you should have given that to me. They’re just happy for you. From a genre perspective, I haven’t noticed much difference. I’ve been treated the same across every genre I’ve published in, which has been lovely.

TVL: That’s wonderful. I love hearing the overwhelmingly positive experiences. I find that’s what I hear most often in Canada, which is really heartening.

HG: Yeah. I’ve never had a poor experience with a publisher, ever. I mean, if I could invite my publishers over for holiday dinners, I would. They’re just wonderful people.

TVL: Your debut novel, The Unravelling of Ou, was released on February 15, 2026. Congratulations! Can you tell our readers a little bit about your new book and the inspiration behind it?

HG: Thank you. The book began with a comment made by Jeremy Luke Hill at Gordon Hill Press, who published Widow Fantasies, my third book. He mentioned that he’d be interested to see what I could do with a longer form. For context, Widow Fantasies is flash fiction. It’s like it’s in the basement of the short fiction world, and I think I was having some inner feelings of inadequacy. I realize that if short fiction is going to be a hard sell, flash fiction is going to be especially difficult. It’s not something that a lot of readers are going to pick up and automatically know what to do with. The general population of readers might be like, what is this? What am I encountering? People who have studied literature in school, who studied creative writing, they’ll know what’s going on. But I was a little bit worried about the general population of readers. And even though you can’t write for the general population of readers, I suddenly thought about them and thought, oh, damn. So, I was having some insecurity about my book’s reception. When Jeremy said he’d love to see what I could do with a longer form, which was a compliment because he obviously liked what I did with the short form, I felt challenged, I guess. And I was like, how dare you? How dare you imply that I couldn’t do a longer form—which he in no way, shape, or form implied at all—but I was just feeling, unnecessarily and ridiculously defensive. (You’re amazing, Jeremy! I’m sorry to drag you into my book’s origin story but here you are!)
So, I decided to write a novel, which was not even on my radar. I had been writing poetry, and I had no idea what I was going to write a novel about. Then I decided to approach it the way I do with poetry, where I think about what is currently obsessing me. At the time, I was obsessing over reading Adele Wiseman’s beautiful memoir of creativity and motherhood, Old Woman at Play. I found an old copy—it’s not in print anymore. And I was captivated by it. The book is about Adele’s mother’s prolific doll-making. Her mother would make dolls from things she found around the house, like onion netting and fishbowls. These dolls were very unusual and at times, I’d argue, unsettling, but very charming and rooted in a place of joy and goodness. Her mother also did not have a particularly easy life. And I started to think about the ways that her mother, other people, and I have used creativity and creation to make sense of our pain or shame or guilt or whatever it is that we’re feeling. And since I have four young children, I made a sock puppet with my youngest and the rest is history. The puppet started talking and it did not stop. So now this puppet, who I named Ecology Paul, is the narrator of this story. That’s where it started.

TVL: That’s amazing. I’m so excited for this book to come out! You’ve written memoir, poetry, and now fiction. How did the process of moving between these genres compare? Did you find there were any surprising similarities or differences?

HG: I’d say that writing poetry is the most natural for me. That’s my factory setting. Anything else is me deviating from the factory setting and shaping it around myself. Next would be creative non-fiction. Personal essays are straightforward and simple for me. It’s a contained universe, which I feel a poem is, too. Then I’d say fiction. The long fiction was a lot, but I finished it the quickest. I wrote The Unravelling of Ou in less than a year, whereas personal essays and poetry can take me years and years and years to write. I wrote flash fiction quite quickly, too, but that was also because I had a friend writing a novel, as well, and we were trading our work back and forth. I felt like when she sent me a chapter, I owed her something in return. With the novel, though, I felt that it was just a really consuming world to be in, and there was no coming up for air. I was constantly in this weird and whimsical space talking to a sock puppet, and while I was having fun at times—it was a very playful experience—I was also aware of the fact that I’d be walking around the zoo with my kid but half my brain would be with Ecology Paul. And my babies are only going to be babies for such a short period, and as a mother who lives with existential OCD, I’m excruciatingly aware of time passing. I’m also aware that most parents know their children as children for less time than they know them as adults. I was getting frustrated with what I perceived as my own selfish creative pursuit taking me away from my babes. So I just wanted to get into the novel and get out, which yes, I did very, very quickly. But it was easy to do because I’m such an obsessive person that I just made it happen. And like I said, I truly was consumed by the story: it occupied my mind constantly. The process was a valuable lesson. It reinforced something I already believed. You cannot wait for inspiration. You just write. You do the work. I wanted to get the book done so I could lie down and stare into the perfect galaxies of my children’s eyes, uninterrupted by the nattering of the story. This motivation drove me. Of course, during the year I wrote the book, I did come up for air and spend time with my children on a daily basis. I must have. But I look back on that time and think, what did I miss? I may have missed too much.

TVL: Wow. That’s fascinating. Long fiction occupies a completely different kind of space for you.

HG: Yeah. I’m not saying I’ll never write a novel again. I also said I was done having kids after two and now I have four, so never say never. But I’m trying to move on to things that give me more space and allow myself to be in this world and enjoy art and engage with art without all-consuming drive. It’s a strange thing to say because I need to finish another book that’s due out next year and it’s not done yet, but it’s personal essays. I can finish them in little bursts. And because of the nature of the essays, which are travel essays, I’m taking my kids to these places and we’re exploring them together. It’s something I get to do with them and they’re in the stories, so it’s a lot of fun.

TVL: Having a deep understanding of how the publishing world works while also being an author is a unique position to be in. How does your insight and experience on both sides of the industry influence your practice as a writer and as a publicist? Have you experienced any challenges balancing the two?

HG: As a writer, I’m going to write whatever I want. I’m not too worried about it being published or who will publish it. Thank goodness Canada has so many amazing independent presses who are into my kind of weird, so I don’t stress over it. But if I aspired to publish with multinationals, I might be in a bit of trouble. I might need to work very hard at making my writing into something it just isn't naturally.
As a publicist, I try to have an honest understanding of what’s going on. The Unravelling of Ou is my first novel. Before it was even out, it got more reviews and attention than anything else I’ve ever written, and that’s in part because of my amazing publicist, Selena Mercuri, and in part because it’s a novel. That is what novels do. Now, I’m not saying it’s not also because this is my fourth book. I’m not debuting with a novel. Debuting with a novel might be different, but the difference in reception between, let’s say, my poetry collection and this is wild. I honestly can’t believe it. It’s mind-blowing. If I was a different kind of person, I might decide to only write novels, but I love the other forms, too. From a publicity standpoint, novels are often the easiest. Some memoirs can be relatively easy, too, depending on the author. But in our catalogue, novels are the most requested by reviewers by a landslide. It’s not even close. River Street has a list of thousands of influencers we work with, and of that list, only about fifty people review poetry. I call them my unicorns. But from a publicity standpoint, I think about what I’m publishing next not with any desire to change what I’m working on, but because I’m aware. I also know from working with other multi-genre writers that when they publish a novel, suddenly their writing gets reviewed in places their work never has before. It’s wild. Just enjoy it while you can.

TVL: In addition to your very busy writing career and multifaceted work as a publicist, you’re also the Poet Laureate of the region you live in, a host on the New Books Network, the host of Howl: The Literary Arts Show on 89.5 CIUT-FM, a member of the Writers’ Union of Canada, the Creative Nonfiction Collective, and the National Book Critics Circle, and a former board member of the League of Canadian Poets and co-chair of the league’s BIPOC Committee. To put it simply, how do you do it all?

HG: I mean, not easily. There’s been burnout and I’ve had to step back. I was reticent to leave the League, for instance, but my term was up and I had to be realistic. I just needed to breathe. Especially when it comes to the unpaid gigs—there is an honorarium for the Poet Laureate position, but everything else you just mentioned is unpaid. Contrary to popular belief, I do not get paid to be a host of the New Books Network. I’m not paid to be a host of Howl. When I write reviews, most of the time I’m not getting paid. I don’t write as many reviews as I used to because of how much I’m interviewing for NBN and Howl. It uses a critical part of my brain, so I don’t review as much as I used to. I might get back to it, but it won’t be until I hand in my next book. I think my drive boils down to me being a smidge neurotic and riotous: I believe in what I do with the intensity of one billion suns. I also believe that I don’t get to complain about the way things are if I’m not trying to change them.
Example: I became a host of the New Books Network after about a year of pitching my authors to them. Finally, I contacted the CEO and asked to become a host. I was already a host of Howl. And I got to be a host of Howl because I was asked by Valentino Assenza, the co-host and co-producer, after he’d heard me do some interviews before. Sometimes people think the individuals behind these podcasts—the people creating and sustaining this infrastructure—are more special or capable than anyone else. And I’m not saying that some of us don’t have an innate ability to be conversational or see the world in a certain way, but I think there are a great many other people who could do what I do. The difference between me and some other individuals is that I said I’ll do it and then I did. That’s it.
Remembering that I was a reader first helps me navigate moments of frustration and doubt. I remember the yellow beanbag chairs in my school library and sitting there for hours with a book. I remember that Scholastic Book Fair excitement. I remember the bookish joy I held as a child and try to channel it into what I do now. How lucky am I to get to talk to authors I admire about books I love?

TVL: The literary world often feels very Toronto-centric, and you live in rural Ontario, several hours away from this city. You’re also incredibly active in the literary scene. How do you prioritize staying involved, and what advice do you have for writers and readers trying to find and build their literary communities wherever they live?

HG: There’s usually something around you. I do drive to Toronto when I can. I often have to get my partner to drive me because I live with chronic pain. So, if I’ve taken something for the pain, I can’t be driving. I look for things around me. I mentioned Heart of the Story, which is a reading series run by Lucy E. M. Black. My local library and bookstore both offer book clubs. There are sometimes writers’ groups there, too. I think maybe if you’re going to be a snob about it—if you’re going there thinking, okay, well I’m here, where are Ondaatje and Atwood?—then you might be disappointed. But if you’re joining these groups just to be around people like you, you probably won’t be. There are great artists everywhere, wherever you are. Not all of them live in cities. So I’d say join a group, and if you can’t join a group, start one. You know, Field of Dreams style: if you build it, they will come. It might take a while. Be patient. Build a community if you can’t find one. Ask around, go out and talk to real people if you can. If you can’t, there are online communities you can join. But I think the world needs more connection. While writing is in some ways very solitary, being a writer doesn’t have to be.

TVL: I imagine you read a lot by nature of all the work that you do. What kind of reader are you? Do you read one book at a time, or do you have many on the go?

HG: I usually have prose and poetry on the go at the same time. It could be non-fiction and poetry, short fiction and poetry, long fiction and poetry, any variation. Poetry is always on the go with something else. But I usually read a couple poems a day. I do most of my reading—this is one of the reasons I’m so tired all the time—at night and I often stay up too late. So, I’ll start with poetry and then switch into whatever else. As soon as I start skimming poems, I know it’s time to close the book because poems are not meant to be skimmed. I can get a few poems in before my brain goes into skim mode. Although there have been books of poetry like Elizabeth Greene’s No Ordinary Days that I read cover to cover and did not skim. Something about the very conversational, easy manner of the poetry made me feel like I was sitting down talking to a friend.

TVL: What are you currently working on?

HG: I’m working on that collection of travel essays about lesser-known places in Ontario to visit. The essays are not particularly journalistic. Everything is filtered through me and what I think about a place, what’s going on in my mind, or whatever weird tangent I’m going to take people on. There’s one on the Bean Puzzle Tombstone in Wellesley, Ontario. There’s one on the now-sunken Silver Islet Mine just outside Thunder Bay. There’s one on the Whetung Ojibwa Centre on Curve Lake, the reservation there. I went to the Village at Black Creek for Christmas, where they light up the village by lamplight.
And I’m always working on poetry. I had a chapbook published by Anstruther Press last year, and I’m working on a larger collection stemming from that. It’s a collection of occasional verse that centres around the way time distortion works in neurodivergent people. How do you account for time when you have trouble connecting to it?

TVL: Lastly, what is the best piece of advice about writing, or other wise, that you’ve ever received?

HG: I would just go back to write about what obsesses you. Don’t try to write what anyone else is writing.
Don’t try to do something because you think it’s trendy or cool. The most interesting thing about you is you. What weird and wonderful things are occupying your thoughts? Let us know about them.