Author MaryAlice Arial is looking to strike literary gold again after winning a writing award with the Senior Times in January and taking the prestigious Laurie Allen Award for advanced creative writing back in June.
Author MaryAlice Arial is looking to strike literary gold again after winning a writing award with the Senior Times in January and taking the prestigious Laurie Allen Award for advanced creative writing back in June.
Now, she has made the shortlist for the John W. Bilsland Award, a new award that celebrates and fosters the creativity of older writers.
How old? There are some questions a reporter should never ask.
“I am very old,” she playfully suggested, carefully veering the conversation away from details of her exact age. “I'm a lot older than 55. I have a daughter who's 55!”
Arial is a well-established writer in these parts, noting that she wrote for Wim Netelenbos for the very first St. Albert Gazette.
Arial also has just released a book of poetry to join her substantial novel called 160 Acres that she hopes will soon be published. As a member of the Blue Pencil Café writing group, she has been published in its anthology called Out of the Blue. She is also a member of the Saint City Writers and will be involved with their next upcoming anthology in the fall. She can be found in a string of anthologies over the years, she said, “with a lot of projects on the back-burner.”
“I just keep doing it. Some people like to bowl; I like to write.”
Her first job – while she was still in high school, no less – was as a reporter for the Edmonton Journal, she continued, writing the Young People's Activities column. She doesn't write for young people any more. The story that she entered for the Bilsland contest, however, is about both young and old alike.
Sneaking Scarlet Sister Mary is a non-fiction work - “creative” non-fiction,” she corrected – about a young girl who sees a book in a streetcar library and is intrigued by its title, ‘Scarlet Sister Mary.'
“She thinks, ‘Hmm… is that a nun that's dressed in red, or did an ogre curse her and turn her red? How did that girl get red?' She figured she'd take the book out but the librarians wouldn't let her. They said, ‘No seven-year-old is going to read that trash!'”
The actual Pulitzer Prize-winning 1928 book by Julia Peterkin was deemed obscene in some parts of the United States for its portrayal of Mary, a black orphan on a plantation who struggled between following the creed of the church and living a life of joy and pleasure.
The girl in Arial's story develops a fixation on it, simply because of the title. The resourceful girl tries everything from honesty to deception to outright connivance, sneakiness, and subterfuge.
“She keeps trying to sneak it out until she's threatened with going to jail! She's obsessed with trying to get the book but she can't. She doesn't get the book… until she's very old!” she laughed.
True to form, the non-fiction work is based on Arial herself.
She remarked that she finally procured an actual copy of the book from an antiquarian bookstore in California.
The Bilsland Award
The John W. Bilsland Award of Literary Excellence for Senior Writers is named after Dr. Bilsland who is well known for inspiring writers at the Strathcona Place 55+ Centre. His gentle critiques and fervent encouragements served the well-founded group of up to 75 members.
The award began last year after the nonagenarian Dr. Bilsland retired from the writing group, where he helped to develop more than 20 published writers over his 25 years there.
Prior to that, he spent three decades as a literature professor at the University of Alberta.
The shortlist was announced by the Strathcona Place Seniors Society on Aug. 15. Strathcona Place is a non-profit seniors' centre that offers a variety of volunteer-run social and recreational programs and services for seniors.
The award is open to all Edmonton-area published writers over the age of 55. Organizers are working to make this a national award.
Joining Arial in the short non-fiction shortlist are Betty McDowell for The Rectory, Lynda De Beer for The Deepest Betrayal, Donna Petit for Dr. Caulfield, and Kathy Hamlin for Heard.
Finalists for the poetry category include Anne Lightfoot for When I Was We, Audrey Ruth Shield for The Abandonment of Robert Frost, Anne Stewart for Legacy, Michael Mott for Swans, and Barbara A. Fraser for Vacancy.
Writers who are up for the short fiction category include Michael Edwin Lamb with a double nomination for both The Perfect Soldier and A Link Into Hell, Katherine Koller for Beloved By The Moon; Sara Coumantarakis for Homing Device, and Audrey Seehagen for Rosa's Gift.
The winners will be announced during the annual awards gala banquet to be held at the Strathcona Place Society on Sept. 12 at 5:30 p.m. Final judging will be done by local authors Todd Babiak, Alice Major, and Theresa Shea.
The event is open to the public and tickets are $50. Attendees will receive a tax receipt for $25.
The centre is located at 10831 University Ave. in Edmonton. More information can be found at www.strathconaplace.com/john-w.-bilsland-literary-award.html.
