The fabulous Confabulist

Monday marks the end of the road for this year’s STARFest, the St. Albert Readers Festival. Steven Galloway could say that it does the same for his six-month cross-country adventures too.

“This book … I’ve been touring pretty much constantly since April,” he began, referring to his fourth novel, The Confabulist. “I think I’ve been home for a couple of weeks. This is just about the end of it for me. This is the end of the road, hopefully.”

The 39-year-old British Columbia author is perhaps best known for his 2008 book, The Cellist of Sarajevo, which was nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and long-listed for the Giller Prize. That story was a fictionalized account of a true story about Vedran Smailovic, a musician who played in the ruins of destroyed buildings during the siege of Sarajevo in the early to mid-1990s.

He was thrilled with that experience, mostly because of who was behind his nomination.

“It’s a neat award because libraries nominate you from around the world. A lot of awards… there’s three people on a jury so I suppose it’s nice if they like your book. But to be nominated by a whole bunch of libraries from around the world is kinda neat. Librarians are smart people and good readers. I liked that.”

The new book, The Confabulist, is another ‘based on real life’ story about the man who threw the punches that might have led to the death of famed illusionist and escape artist, Harry Houdini. The story weaves in other historical characters while juggling the battles that Houdini had with the spiritualists of the day, a group of psychics and mediums who he felt were more fraudulent in terms of duping the public than magicians like himself.

“I felt that there was a story in terms of the relationship between magic, how magic tricks work and what magicians do, and the way our own minds work in constructing our memories and sense of who we are and where we are,” he said, offering an explanation of his inspiration for the story.

The Confabulist is currently on the shortlist for The 14th annual Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. The prize itself will be announced during a ceremony in Toronto on Tuesday, meaning the author might have one more stop to make before heading home.

There, he also has his day job waiting for him. Galloway has been a professor of creative writing at the University of British Columbia for almost 15 years. How does he respond to those who suggest that those who can, write, and those who can’t, teach writing?

“I politely invite them to stick their head up their own ass and fight for air,” he replied, good-humouredly. “I don’t go their work and insult them. If you can’t do it, you would never be able to teach anyone to do it. You can talk about whether there are good teachers and bad teachers but the notion that anyone would teach because you can’t do it is ludicrous.”

The author of four novels didn’t come to the craft until he was in university in his early twenties, publishing his dĂ©but novel, Finnie Walsh, around the same period.

Writing, he said, is a challenge but one that he can’t help but pursue.

“I don’t know if it’s always been in my blood. I’ve always liked stories but not necessarily writing.”

He’s looking forward to his appearance (along with host Marty Chan) on Monday, his first time in St. Albert. The end of the road will finally offer him the chance to rest. It might give him the opportunity to start a new book. At the very least, it will afford him a huge sigh of relief.

“I don’t know ... anything, really. Just not hanging out in hotel rooms in strange cities.”