#WriterWednesday with Karin Melberg Schwier
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I’d like to welcome author Karin Melberg Schwier to the blog for #WriterWednesday!
Favorite foods: When I had a milestone birthday, my son and his wife in California sent me a “meat package” for my birthday. Sourced locally, it was filled with meat of all sorts. I am definitely a carnivore.
Things that make you want to gag: Mom and Dad, ever since my brother and I were little, used to make an abomination called “Milk Toast” when they were sick. Poached egg, toast, and hot milk in a bowl with a big dollop of butter greasing its way across the surface. Gag. My brother and I both agree on this; do not eat, no matter how sick you are.
Something you’re really good at: I’m a pretty darn good cartoonist and illustrator. I don’t do it often enough and you do get rusty if you don’t work those muscles, but I love it.
Something you’re really bad at: Much to my older brother’s chagrin, I cannot whistle properly, and I really am a bad bike rider. Not motorcycle bike, well, that, too, but just plain old bicycle.
Favorite music or song: John Mayer, Great Big Sea, The Coors, Beatles, John Fogelberg, Joni Mitchell, Little River Band, jeez, I can’t think of them all! I can’t leave out Rhye, the band my son Ben plays with (keys).
Music that drives you crazy: Rap. My son insists there’s something to appreciate in all music. But. I’m sorry, I just can’t.
Favorite smell: Rosemary.
Something that makes you hold your nose: Cat barf. I get more of the latter than the former.
Last best thing you ate: Leg of lamb. I love lamb. I have spent a lot of time in New Zealand; once when I was 20, I worked on a dairy farm and lived with the family. Daphne prepared huge lamb roasts, and I was in heaven.
Last thing you regret eating: Our friends in Australia just sent my son a bag of chocolate covered goji berries called Koala Poop. I had some. Mistake.
Favorite places you’ve been: New Zealand, Turkey, Italy, Australia, England, Scotland, Catalina Island.
Places you never want to go to again: Las Vegas. Could be because we hiked many miles along the South Rim of the Grand Canyon that day, and I found LV to be hugely irritating.
People you’d like to invite to dinner: Yann Martel and Alice Kuipers, which wouldn’t be a big stretch since they’re neighbors. Other favorite authors like Elizabeth Hay, Guy Vanderhaeghe, Marina Endicott. Ernest Hemingway, wouldn’t that be fascinating? Stephen King, absolutely. We want to talk to him about a chapter book he offered online, one chapter at a time called The Plant. “Don’t cheat the blind guy selling pencils.” If anyone stole a chapter, he’d shut it down. We always paid, and then he shut it down anyway. We have a bone to pick.
People you’d cancel dinner on: Donald Trump. Anyone who thinks Donald Trump is a brilliant man.
The coolest person you’ve ever met: Hmm, tough one. I guess Madelyn Davis, who was the writer on the I Love Lucy series. She was my step-kids’ step-grandmother, if that makes sense. I could talk to her all day about writing.
The celebrity who didn’t look like he/she did in pictures/video: Rodney Dangerfield, in an elevator at the Beverly Hilton hotel. He looked a bit more ragged than I expected.
The nicest thing a reader said to you: Your novel took me back to my childhood on the farm. I could feel it and smell it. (This was my 92-year-old father-in-law after reading an early draft of my first novel).
The craziest thing a reader said to you: “I won’t read your novel because it’s not science fiction.” (This was my dad.)
Besides writing, what’s the most creative thing you’ve done: I think drawing, illustrating. I’ve always thought I’d like to learn to paint but so far I’ve just stuck with pen and ink drawing.
A project that didn’t quite turn out the way you planned it: I’m still trying to get going on this. I thought I’d be farther along. My dad is 97 and has dementia; I started a short non-fiction story about our experience, and I’ve wanted to get going on a book-length project, but this is hard.
Some real-life story that made it to one of your books: A young girl with Down syndrome was raped by a neighbor farmer and her baby was taken as soon as he was born. The farmer was charged with “carnal knowledge of a woman known to be feeble-minded” — that was a real law in the Criminal Code — and sentenced to the lash and prison time. His wife disowned him, banished him to the barn, and he died of pneumonia. I changed the cause of death. The young girl always wanted to see her baby “just one more time.”
Something in your story that readers think is about you, but it’s not: In my novel, a character on his 13th birthday rides a horse without permission, and it runs wild with him, and he dies in an accident. I’ve had people who assume that was me (not the dying part), but that I lost control of a horse.
About Karin:
A freelance writer, editor and illustrator in Saskatoon, Karin edits and writes for Saskatoon HOME and contributes to Prairies North magazines. She began her career as a reporter for a northern Alberta weekly newspaper while still in high school. Her series of profiles on pioneers of the Peace River country was published as a book, Yesterday’s Children, when she was 19. In Saskatchewan, she spent over 25 years in communications work for an advocacy organization for people with intellectual disabilities, and produced an award-winning newsmagazine.
Karin has written or co-authored six non-fiction books and two illustrated children’s books exploring the lives of people with disabilities, and edited several others. Other creative non-fiction has appeared in anthologies in Canada and the U.S. In 2013, Karin received a YWCA Women of Distinction Award (Arts, Culture and Heritage) for her writing on disability issues.
Small Reckonings, first published by Burton House Books in 2020 and now out in a new edition from Shadowpaw Press, is her debut novel. It received the 2019 John V. Hicks Award for Fiction, a Saskatchewan Book Award in 2021, and was recognized by the national jury for the inaugural Glengarry Book Award in 2021, named to the Jury Short List, Recognition of Literary Excellence. Most recently, the sequel to her debut novel was awarded first prize in the 2022 John V. Hicks Award for Fiction, the first time an author has won this genre category twice in a row.
She lives in Saskatoon with husband Richard, Professor Emeritus, University of Saskatchewan, and son Jim. She has two other children, Benjamin (Julia, grandaughters Pearl and Dahlia), and Erin (Michael, grandson Alexander).
