A few minutes with ... Whitney French

Throughout the month, I am posting my interviews with members of the literary community. Today, I am pleased to share my conversation with Whitney French. Whitney is a talented writer, performer, and educator who should be on everyone in the literary community's radar. 

DS:

Last year you toured Eastern Canada with your workshop for writers of color. How were you received? What did you learn on the road?

WF:

 I toured Eastern Canada, specifically Halifax but also journeyed to Detroit, Ottawa and Montreal as well last summer. To clarify, the workshop is for black writers, different from a POC group. There is such rich history and love and welcoming energy from Halifax. Most of Scotia actually, the hospitality is visceral and affirming that black communities and collective love exist in Canadian landscapes. I remember one morning walking along Gottingen and stumbling upon the Delmore Buddy Daye Learning Institute, I was attracted by the flyer for a Viola Desmond movie night so I just walked in. When I told the staff what I was doing with Writing While Black, they literally stopped their work and shared stories with me, gave me contacts, connected me with young people in the area and one of the staff come through to the event. There's a hunger for this work, these communities, these gatherings of black folks working with the written word. 

On the road I learned so much about myself — an artist weaving in and out of different spaces, I learned to honor the histories that came before me, I learned to listen and follow the etiquette of a visitor, which for some Toronto-based artists that tricky. Hell, it's a harsh truth for any settler on Turtle Island. I was curious to learn of relationships between Black folks and Mi'kmaw folks, who've been sharing space for multiple generations. I learned that Blackness is complex and Black Canadians are complex — we thrive, survive and create works that may never receive 'literary' merit but are immeasurably important and worth digging for.

DS:

During live performances, you regularly combine page poetry and improvisation, what was your original inspiration to use a typewriter as part of your performances/readings?

WF:

I never thought to bring my typewriter into my performance work until one day a musician friend asked me to busk with them. (Note: this was days after being rejected from a literary arts grant and feeling like a total loser.) Back then, I felt like I had to 'prove' I was a writer despite no external affirmation of that truth. Typewriters, to me, were the (annoyingly) obvious symbol of being deemed and labeled as a writer with a capital W.

I love poetry busking (writing poetry for folks on the street with a typewriter) but didn't truly activate the potential of performance until I was asked to busk with a live musician in the small Good Times Bad Times cafe near the Junction (sadly the cafe is no more). That experience was electrifying. Music has always been my introduction to artistic exploration, whether it was growing up with a DJing father, or my ten years of piano lessons as a kid, or my growing number of musician friends. I place a lot of pressure on myself when it comes to writing, whereas music never was serious. Poetry busking has a bit of a musicality to it and an inherent playfulness that, in a nutshell, was extremely inspiring.   

DS:

What are your thoughts on opportunities for black writers in Canada's traditional literary industry?

WF:

Ah! My thoughts, well. As someone who is actively creating spaces for black folk to connect, build, network, encourage another and write with each other, I believe in self-activation. We have no choice but to create these opportunities for ourselves. Because sure I could rattle off stats on how disproportionately black writers receive publishing opportunities and I could expose the fallacy of 'equal opportunity' in Canada and the erasure of black narratives entirely, or I can just make things happen for my folks. So it's nothing new or ground-breaking. It's work that simply needs to be done. We know black writers greatly contribute to the history of Canadian writing, to the global literary canon actually, and will continue to contribute, create, challenge and innovate with or without structural support put in place.

DS:

What are you currently working on?

WF:

I'm currently focusing a lot of energy into creating spaces for black writers to inspire each other. This manifests most poignantly in the creative writing series I started called Writing While Black. Myself, along with a crew of mighty, intelligent, hilarious and good spirited writers, we are connecting and challenging the notions of community work and literary space. It's an experiment of shaping something that supports the art and artistic practice of so many people. 

But to bring it down to what I am writing, I have been wrestling with a science fiction novel for a while. Actively wrestling and writing. I love zines and self-publishing so I'm also editing the fourth edition of 'From the Root' which is a nation-wide publication of writing and illustration by women of color. We're exploring the theme of HOME which is a highly stimulating topic for me. I'm also playing with folklore and collecting stories from my grandmother and my aunties and seeing what they look like under different lights. Things have been joyously experimental, which is to say, I'm not fixed on a specific novel, book, collection, project right now but grabbing stories as they rush towards me.

Bio

Whitney French is a storyteller and a multi-disciplinary artist. She is a certified arts educator who has executed over 300 workshops in schools, community centres, prisons, group homes and First Nations’ reserves. Her debut collection 3 Cities was self-published in April 2012. Additionally, her writing has been published in Descant Magazine, Canthius Journal, Selfish Magazine and anthologized in The Great Black North: Contemporary African Canadian Poetry. Whitney has work forthcoming in a collection of short fiction edited by Dr. Althea Prince. 

A self-described futurist and an avid tree-climber and Tetris master, Whitney is also the founder and co-editor and of the nation-wide publication From the Root Zine as well as the founder of the workshop series, Writing While Black -- an initiative to develop a community of black writers.