From A to Zorn
Montreal author makes her publishing debut with Ruins & Relics
by Barbara Pavone
Alice Zorn’s Ruins & Relics was 20 years in the making. PHOTO RILEY SPARKS
“It’s like brushing my teeth,” she said. “If I haven’t written [all day], I feel really sleazy.”
Author Alice Zorn has always been entranced by literature, but she never imagined she’d one day pen anything herself.
“It never occurred to me to write,” said Zorn, who published her first book of short stories, Ruins & Relics, this year. “I actually didn’t start writing until I was 30.”
Zorn’s path to writing was filled with trial and error. After completing an English degree, she tried her hand at teaching.
“I didn’t enjoy teaching at all,” she recalled. “I knew I would never be a good teacher, so I quit and I bartended.”
She went on to work as a pastry chef and a seamstress, and was partway through her PhD until one day it finally dawned on her: she would work as a full-time writer.
“The very first story I wrote, it was the most exciting thing I had ever done,” she said. “I focused like I never focused. I was completely into it; it was great.”
Zorn’s short stories span a myriad of subjects, from a simple USB key which connects two strangers in a library in “Entrez André” to a body marked with permanent, unfortunate relics of scars in “All the Suffering” to a Lebanese cedar tree which eternally binds two strangers and wannabe lovers in “The Other Canadian.”
Zorn has the rare ability to depict vivid settings—whether it be a library or an exotic land like Tunisia—and characters, making them jump off the page and into the reader’s mind.
Putting together her debut book was another tribulation-filled journey that would last almost 20 years. A self-proclaimed perpetual realist, Zorn didn’t expect it to go well.
“I didn’t think that publishing a book was easy,” she admitted. “What was surprising is that I finally did it.”
A true writer needs to have a pen and paper handy since ideas can arrive spontaneously, and sometimes only once every few months, said Zorn.
“I write a first draft as fast as I can,” she said. “I like that organic feel, the flow of the story straight through. I try not to fool around with it afterwards. The way I write it the first time, that’s what I stick with.”
In advising young authors, Zorn said she is a firm believer that you should write for your own interests first and foremost.
“Never hold back writing a story because you think there’s no market or it’s not trendy,” she said.
With Ruins & Relics finally on bookshelves, Zorn is now working on publishing her first novel and has plans to continue writing every day.
“It’s like brushing my teeth,” she said. “If I haven’t written [all day], I feel really sleazy.”
Ruins & Relics
Alice Zorn
NeWest Press
213 pp
$19.95
The Link Volume 30 Issue 25