TORONTO – He’s published over a dozen books and received numerous award nominations, but writer Thomas King says he’s never been on a hot streak like this.
In February, the 71-year-old from Guelph, Ont., won the $40,000 British Columbia National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction for The Inconvenient Indian, in March he landed the $25,000 RBC Taylor Prize for non-fiction for the same book, and on Tuesday he got a $25,000 Governor General’s Literary Award in the fiction category for The Back of the Turtle.
Meanwhile, Daniel Poliquin’s French translation of King’s The Inconvenient Indian also won a $25,000 Governor General’s award on Tuesday, highlighting a career period that’s “just been busier than blazes,” says King.
And yet such success also comes at a time when King feels the climate for his kind of “hard-hitting writing has gotten worse” as large corporations try to use their power to stifle critics, and “the social environment feels much chillier for saying something that needs to be saying,” he says.
“I just saw where some large corporation is suing protesters for protesting,” the political activist-turned-writer and professor said in a telephone interview. “They claim that they’ve lost money because people don’t like their product, basically, or don’t like the way they do business, which is idiotic. But nonetheless, they’re dragging individuals and organizations to court, because of course the large corporation has more money than the individual does.
“I think that that climate, in terms of using writing to talk about social ills, to talk about the way we treat the environment, is much more fraught than it was 20 years ago.”
King noted that in writing The Back of the Turtle, about a scientist who visits his mother’s aboriginal reserve community after it’s been deserted due to an environmental disaster, he had to change the name of one of the corporations he had created “because it was too close to another corporation and there was a chance that they might have taken that book to court.”
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“So I think the power of the corporations and their willingness to do a lot of really nefarious things to deflect criticism is kind of scary,” said King, who is of Cherokee and Greek descent, “and I think that writers, poets, artists of all sorts are always on the edge out there — and I think that edge has become razor sharp now.”
The California native, who has been living in Canada since 1980, figures he’s able to get around such challenges because he writes with satire, which he calls his “haven.” He’s not interested in “beating somebody over the head with a blunt club” when it comes to his messages, so he uses humour to do so.
“I’m at an age now where there isn’t a whole hell of a lot they can do to me,” he said with a laugh. “I mean, truly. I’m on the backside of the moon right now.”
Still, he’s received some backlash to The Inconvenient Indian, which focused on issues surrounding aboriginal history and land.
“The Inconvenient Indian generated some fairly nasty emails. Things like, ‘You guys are all a bunch of … bums. You should go back where you came from’ kind of thing,'” said King, using an unprintable expletive. “That was one email. If you talk about native rights, if you talk about land rights in particular, you get some fairly violent reactions to that.
“But those were in the minority, certainly.”
The Canada Council for the Arts administers the Governor General’s Literary Awards, which honour writers in both official languages and in seven categories. Each winner, chosen by peer assessment committees, receives $25,000.
This year’s English-language non-fiction winner is Vancouver’s Michael Harris for The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We’ve Lost in a World of Constant Connection.
Montreal native Arleen Pare won the poetry prize for Lake of Two Mountains, while the drama honour went to Jordan Tannahill of Toronto for Age of Minority: Three Solo Plays Playwrights.
The winner for children’s literature, text is Raziel Reid of Vancouver for When Everything Feels like the Movies.
In the children’s illustration category, the honour went to Calgary native Jillian Tamaki for This One Summer, text by Mariko Tamaki.
The English translation honour went to Peter Feldstein for Paul-Emile Borduas: A Critical Biography by Francois-Marc Gagnon.
The awards will be presented Nov. 26 in a ceremony presided over by Gov. Gen. David Johnston at Rideau Hall in Ottawa.
King said he planned to use his acceptance speech to address issues surrounding native affairs.
“I don’t see wasting time with platitudes on that opportunity, so we’ll see. I don’t think I’ll get into trouble,” he said with a chuckle. “I’ve already sent them the speech. They wanted to see it ahead of time and I said ‘sure.’ … The lawyers haven’t called me to say ‘No, you can’t say that’ yet, at which point I’ll say, ‘Yes I can.’
“It makes a little sense that if you talk about certain things and certain issues in your writing, to not say anything about those in your public presentations. Why would you not continue that conversation that you started in the writing itself?”
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