Cumyn, Alan 1960-

views updated

CUMYN, Alan 1960-

PERSONAL: Born January 8, 1960, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; son of George Louis (a teacher of mathematics and science) and Suzanne (a graphic artist; maiden name, Cox) Cumyn; married Suzanne Evans, June 21, 1986; children: Gwenlyn Adelaide, Anna Simone. Education: Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, B.A., 1983; University of Windsor, M.A., 1984.

ADDRESSES: Home—1232 Collins Ave., Ottawa, Ontario K1V 6E1, Canada; fax: 613-523-3895. E-mail— acumyn@yahoo.com.

CAREER: Katimavik (youth program), Toronto, Ontario, Canada, group leader, 1984-86; Xuzhou Teacher's College, Xuzhou, China, foreign expert, 1986-87; Immigration and Refugee Board, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, research officer and writer, 1991-99; full-time writer, 1999—. Lecturer at Algonquin College, 1988, and Satya Wacana Christian University, 1994. Ottawa Word on the Street Festival, member of events committee, 1998; presenter of writing workshops; gives readings from his works; serves on literary juries for short fiction competitions. Canadian International Development Agency, member of secretariat, Awards for Canadians, 1989; World University Service of Canada, program officer with China Programme, 1990.

MEMBER: PEN Canada (chair of Writers-in-Prison Committee, 2001—), Writers Union of Canada.

AWARDS, HONORS: First prize in short fiction category, Ottawa competition, Canadian Author's Association, 1990; Ontario Arts Council grants, 1993, 1999; Canada Council grants, 1996, 1999, 2001; Ottawa-Carleton Book Award, 1999, for Man of Bone; Ottawa Book Award, 2001, for Burridge Unbound.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

Waiting for Li Ming, Goose Lane Editions (Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada), 1993.

Between Families and the Sky, Goose Lane Editions (Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada), 1995.

Man of Bone, Goose Lane Editions (Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada), 1998.

Burridge Unbound, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2000.

Losing It, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2001, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2003.

The Secret Life of Owen Skye (juvenile), Groundwood Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2002.

OTHER

What in the World Is Going On? A Guide for Canadians Wishing to Work, Volunteer, or Study in Other Countries, Canadian Bureau for International Education (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada), 1988, 4th edition, 1996.

Work represented in anthologies, including Best Canadian Short Stories 1996, Oberon Press (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada), 1996. Contributor of short stories, articles, and reviews to periodicals, including New Quarterly, Canadian Forum, Pottersfield Portfolio, Fiddlehead, Quarry, Antigonish Review, Geist, Ottawa City, Storyteller, and Human Rights and China.

SIDELIGHTS: Alan Cumyn told CA: "I'm all over the map as a writer. I tend to experiment with a wide range of styles, themes, and materials. My first novel, for example, Waiting for Li Ming, is an intense trip to the China of the late 1980s. Between Families and the Sky is a coming-of-age romance with a focus on family. Man of Bone and Burridge Unbound are taut, dark works focused on human rights issues and how an essentially ordinary man can survive and cope with the worst of life's disasters. Losing It is also dark and intense, focused on madness and things coming apart, but it is funny in places as well, since some of the major problems are self-imposed. My novel for children, The Secret Life of Owen Sky, revels in the innocence and fantasies of boyhood, with a trio of brothers whose rich inner lives only rarely intersect with reality.

"There's a sense of humor throughout the work, although it's more evident in some novels. Dark, gritty humor helps to get Bill Burridge through incarceration by the terrorist Kartouf, for example, and through the indignities of post-traumatic stress disorder (Man of Bone and Burridge Unbound), and even the hapless English professor Bob Sterling can at times laugh at himself during the worst week in his life, when he teeters on the edge of losing his job, home, wife, family, and last semblance of self-respect (Losing It).

"The seed of a novel for me is usually the thought of an interesting character in a compelling situation: a junior diplomat on his first posting abroad, in a hood, in a closet, in shackles, freaking out (Man of Bone), or an aged lady with the beginnings of Alzheimer's disease trying to understand why her daughter is moving her things out of her house (Losing It). I try to grow the book from there, using the logic of the initial situation, with a strong focus on the physical details: the smell of the oil-soaked hood, the hundreds of strange things a person can accumulate over the course of a lifetime.

"I grew up in Ottawa and won a city-wide short-story contest sponsored by the Humane Society when I was fourteen, and I started writing seriously a few years later. I was deeply interested in popular music, but found the songs on 'AM radio' strangely unsatisfying. So I started writing my own, and having no musical training whatsoever, and not much aptitude, soon found myself concentrating on the lyrics. Most of my poems were turning into stories anyway, so it seemed natural to shift into prose. At Queen's University I won a couple of short-story contests, then I went to the University of Windsor to study with Alistair MacLeod, a great stylist and storyteller, and a wonderful teacher as well. One of the main ideas I came away with was the realization that a work of fiction must be absolutely gripping, or else the blandest of things will take the reader away. (MacLeod's example was always a cheese sandwich.)

"I taught English for a year in China in 1986 and 1987, which provided material for Waiting for Li Ming, and researched and wrote on human rights issues for eight years in the nineties for the Immigration and Refugee Board in Ottawa, which formed the background for the Burridge books. For the last few years I've been writing fiction full time, time which I have cherished."