Darryl Whetter
Categories: Male Authors - Anglophone Authors - Novelists - Authors of Non-Fiction - Saint John River Valley
Biography
Darryl Whetter lived and wrote in New Brunswick from 1994-2001. While pursuing his MA in English and creative writing at University of New Brunswick, he read fiction for the Fiddlehead and co-founded the literary magazine QWERTY. During his doctorate at University of New Brunswick, he published many of the short stories that would become his 2003 book A Sharp Tooth in the Fur (Goose Lane Editions).
How has New Brunswick influenced your work?
I lived around and met great writers. Bill Gaston and Don McKay were my MA professors at University of New Brunswick. Working at both the Fiddlehead and helping to create QWERTY gave me experience at opposite ends of the spectrum for journals. Where else in Canada does a city of 50,000 people have three substantial literary journals? Also, I got to hear so many writers read through Canada-Council and University of New Brunswick readings.
What is your favourite New Brunswick book, and why?
Bill Gaston's The Good Body has two ingredients too regularly absent from Canadian fiction: humour and plot. It's also a great Canadian campus novel. Time magazine claims Canada has the highest per capita undergraduate enrollment, yet we rarely produce campus novels.
What do you consider to be the highlight of your career so far?
Launching The Push & the Pull at the Frye Festival.
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Literary Prizes |
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| Longlisted, CBC Short Story Prize - 2012 | |
| Shortlisted, Canada-U.S. Fulbright Award, Visiting Research Chair in Creative Writing (New York University) - 2010 | |
| 100 Top Books, The Globe and Mail - 2003 | In recognition of: A Sharp Tooth |
| Nomination - National Magazine Award for Fiction - 2002 |
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Featured Publication |
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The Push & the Pull (2008) |
Excerpt: Surrender to the ride’s pain. Graft your breath to the pain. Indissoluble from every endurance sport, synonymous with the very word endurance, is one fundamental command—breathe pain. Make the pain your breath. Stretch your lungs with pain. Betty, an occasional practitioner of yoga, once gave Andrew a yogic prescription for “nowness.” “Your body is the past; your mind is the future. Your breath unites them in the present.” Now, every aching moment of now, his bike trip is a debate of pain. Any desire must now win approval from the legs. To want is to sweat. Any desire is a weight. A small bag of fine white powder. The well-folded map. A contraband novel, that decadent slab of unnourishing, non-warming mass, squats with its corrupt weight in the front right pannier. |
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Find this author in the New Brunswick public libraries catalogue.
Source(s): Author.
