6 minute read
Lisa Moore’s hard ticket to love
The master of fiction has mentored many Newfoundland and Labrador writers who have become their own success stories
Photo by Ritchie Perez by Shannon Webb-Campbell
winner of the 2021 governor general’s literary award for drama
The archetypal studentteacher romance is cleverly turned on its head for the post-#MeToo era in this striking new play by the acclaimed author of What a Young Wife Ought to Know and Bunny.
“Everything about Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes was perfect. I loved it.” —Sam Mooney, Mooney on Theatre
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Newfoundland-based writer Lisa Moore is a hard ticket, but she does it all for love. Her most recent novel, This Is How We Love (Anansi 2022), illustrates her infatuation with the power of story, chosen family and character. Her obsession with storytelling is infused in every aspect of her life, as she writes daily, teaches creative writing and has recently edited the anthology Hard Ticket: New Writing Made in Newfoundland, which will be published by Breakwater Books this summer. The collection features some of Moore’s former creative writing students’ short fiction.
When I ask Moore, what exactly is a hard ticket, she answers: “A hard ticket is a Character, character with a capital C, a person who might cause trouble, get into fights, but is also full of wit, and some kind of hard-formed integrity, someone shaped by challenging circumstances, [and] bad weather!
“[A hard ticket] is a rascal, the street urchin, the kid who steals copper and sells it for a slice of pizza, or some perfume for her mother. The person who outwits those in power and has a good story to tell about it afterwards. Definitely a risk taker and a storyteller.”
The characters in Hard Ticket are scallywags, scoundrels, wild cards. Each of the writers included in the anthology has studied creative writing, the majority in workshops at Memorial University. Many of these authors have got a taste for writing fiction, and most never looked back. Several are working on or have published books.
“Each story is a variant, with a spike that gets in our very cells, a narrative hook, that makes us stronger people, more able to understand each other,” says Moore. “So, the act of bringing very different stories together under the same roof is something I love. Feel passionate about.
“Reading these stories, talking to the very, very talented writers in Hard Ticket, about
what is important to them when shaping a story—that was such fun.”
The anthology features Bridget Canning’s “The Years the Locusts Have Eaten,” Olivia Robinson’s “Effie,” Sobia Shaheen Shaikh’s “You-Cee,” Xavier Campbell’s “Eight Months to a Year,” Tzu-Hao Hsu’s “Twilight Airs, Iron, Water” and Matthew Hollett’s “The City Wears Thin.”
Métis writer, poet and academic Michelle Porter’s short story, “Snowblower,” embodies the phrase hard ticket. A hard-edged daughter who likes to cause trouble confronts her father. Porter’s story was inspired by anger and the kind of sense of humour needed to take the piss out of one’s self. She describes the ruggedness of Newfoundland, the place, the people and their love of a good yarn—and in particular, Lisa Moore, who helped shape her as a writer.
“Why write if you’re not causing a bit of trouble?” Porter says. “Why write if there’s not an undercurrent of anger about the way the world is? That anger can be used to spark change—and I think that’s the kind of Hard Ticket Lisa Moore is.”
As a graduate of Memorial’s Masters of Arts, I was drawn to the English department because of Moore’s reputation as a writer and mentor. I first encountered her short story collection, Degrees of Nakedness, years ago. I remember highlighting half of the book with a bright yellow marker—it was like her stories were seeping into my pores. Years later, Moore became my thesis advisor. She still infects students with the hunger for story.
“I love the opportunity to encourage new stories,” Moore says. “I love watching these
stories come into being, these writers teach me things. It’s a big cauldron—the classroom—and we’re boiling up stories, seeing what floats to the surface, what’s nourishing, what’s magic. It’s heady. Every new brilliant story carves a new path for the next writer.”
Moore, who keeps a daily writing and sketching practice, has been hunkered down living and teaching remotely from around the bay since the pandemic started. She loves working with writers, as it provides an opportunity to talk about stories all day long. Moore is constantly astonished by how different the stories are shaped in creative writing workshops.
“I believe a writer’s voice is like a fingerprint or an iris scan— unique. Nothing can squash that difference, once a writer gets going. Writing workshops just point out the tools: how a character is shaped on the page; what an adjective or a semi-colon can do,” says Moore. “Every student who ends up in a creative writing class already has a ton of stories they want to unleash. But sometimes we all need to hear: Yes, that thing you want to say, that thing burning inside you that you’re desperate to show people, that thing is a story.”
Moore has a teakettle of stories boiling inside of her, and spilling over. She firmly believes in the power of literature, especially during these troubled times. After two years living through a pandemic, the recent violence of the trucker convoy, troops pulling out of Afghanistan and the bombing of Ukraine, stories are an offering of something—a cup of something warm, a recollection, a teaching, a means to go on.
“In the midst of all this, we may need a moment to reflect, to try to understand who we are,” Moore says. “Stories are gifts, they are medicine, they are what help us understand our experiences, understand each other, whether they are the stories we tell each other at the dinner table, in a bomb shelter or in a book.”
Moore’s latest novel, This Is How We Love, is rooted in her strong conviction that the violence in St. John’s has grown far beyond what she remembers growing up, and a widespread new tolerance for ultra-right bad behavior. The novel stems from a desire to trace the meaning of love through families, but also to recognize that families are based on will, and aren’t necessarily formed by blood relations.
“Families are those who fall into our circle of love and love us right back, so the novel is about mothers, foster mothers, people who care for other peoples' children, just because. Because children are vulnerable and they show up in the oddest places, looking for love,” says Moore. “And love between all kinds of people. I wanted to document the ways I have been loved, through fictional characters of course. The beneficence of it, the sheer luck and generosity. But also, the ways people fail to love, and the consequences of all that.” ■
HARD TICKET
Edited by Lisa Moore Breakwater Books
THIS IS HOW WE LOVE
Lisa Moore House of Anansi Press
Bridget Canning
SHANNON WEBB-CAMPBELL is a member of Qalipu Mi’kmaq First Nation. Her books include: Still No Word (Breakwater 2015), I Am A Body of Land (Book*hug 2019), and Lunar Tides (Book*hug 2022). Shannon is a doctoral candidate at the University of New Brunswick in the Department of English, and the editor of Visual Arts News Magazine. She lives and works in Kjipuktuk / Halifax, Nova Scotia.
