Interviewed by Christine Palka, Creative Writing
Tammy Armstrong’s latest novel Pearly Everlasting is now available in Canada and will release in the US on October 7. Pearly Everlasting is based on Armstrong’s manuscript “Ursula” that won the HarperCollinsPublishersLtd/UBC Prize for Best New Fiction in 2022. In a narrative sown with rural folklore and superstition, Pearly Everlasting is an enchanting woodland Gothic about the triumph of good over evil and the forgotten beauty of the natural world.
Armstrong is the author of five books of critically acclaimed and award-winning poetry and two novels published in Canada. She is a graduate of the UBC School of Creative Writing’s Master of Fine Arts program and holds a PhD from the University New Brunswick. Her first poetry collection, Bogman’s Music, written during her MFA at UBC was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry.
We spoke with Armstrong about her experience working alongside HarperCollins and CookeMcDermid Literary Management to prepare her novel for publication.
Could you tell us a little about your book and what inspired you to write it?
Pearly Everlasting follows Pearly and her “brother,” Bruno—a runty black bear—who are raised together in a Depression-era lumber camp in New Brunswick. Not long after their sixteenth birthdays, a camp boss, set on exploiting the woodsmen, despite the dangers inherent in that sort of hard labour, sells Bruno to a travelling animal act. Pearly, who has never been outside the camps, treks through fifty miles of winter woods to rescue Bruno. It’s a story about greed and poverty. It’s a story about love and kinship and resilience.
Initially, my inspiration came from an article my mother gave me, shortly after I’d finished my PhD: an excerpt from the nature photographer William Lyman Underwood’s memoir, Wild Brother. The memoir recalls meeting a woman in a Maine lumber camp in the late 18th century nursing an orphaned black bear cub along with her newborn daughter. What an image! Underwood goes on to describe his years’ long friendship with Bruno, the bear, after he was placed in a New England animal sanctuary.
I grew up in rural New Brunswick. Some of my relatives, including my grandfather, worked in the lumber camps as teamsters and blacksmiths during the Depression on into the 1950s. When I was a kid, sitting in my grandmother’s kitchen, these guys would tell tall stories about those years—sometimes making it a bit of a competition to see who could come up with the wildest tales. The bear-baby siblings, my love of animals, my familiarity with Maine, New Brunswick, and lumber camps were the first few threads that sparked the book to life.
Could you share how your studies from your doctorate degree in Literature and Critical Animal Studies from the University of New Brunswick influenced your writing of Pearly Everlasting?
My dissertation looked to how animals disrupt our sense of self, our superiority, our place in the world, and what it means to have ineffable experiences with more-than-human creatures. I explored these questions through literature. Literature, in particularly poetry, is an ideal genre for this sort of analysis because language, while malleable, can be inadequate for describing experience. Anyone who’s had an animal encounter—a moose steps out in front of your car, a rattlesnake on a trail, a monkey at a temple— has discovered there are ruptures between us and them. Life also lies outside language. This sort of thinking influenced Pearly Everlasting. I leaned on my poetry background, weaving some magical elements throughout the novel, as a way to get around some of that ineffability and give Pearly and Bruno’s bond dimension and complexity.
I like to think Pearly Everlasting offers space for other ways of being in the world—as a bear, as a person who’s bonded to a bear, as a young girl isolated in the backwoods of New Brunswick. I wanted to apply some pressure on how rigid we can be with how we believe the world is ordered. Bruno helps show this. He’s not a pet. He’s an autonomous creature with his own perceptions and understanding of place. Anyone with a pet will tell you they understand the animal and the animal understands them, because animals are complex and emotional, just like people. It was these sorts of experiences that I wanted to explore with Pearly Everlasting and Bruno: that inexplicable bond between two creatures with and without a shared language.
Could you share with us a few details on your experience working with the publisher?
Working with the HarperCollins team has been a wonderful experience. I’ve really enjoyed my time with Janice Zawerbny, my editor. I love working with editors because they are such wonderful readers, often seeing what you’re trying to do before you do. It’s a real skill to be able to anticipate how a finished manuscript might look just by reading an earlier draft. Janice and Emily Griffin, my editor at HarperCollins US, have really worked hard to bring Pearly Everlasting to a wider audience and their support is much appreciated. The attention the copyeditors and proofreaders gave to the manuscript was also so professional and careful. There is so much quiet work done behind the scenes in publishing, small or large. That sort of care makes a writer feel very supported.
How have you benefited from literary representation and what are some of its advantages?
I feel very fortunate to have literary representation. Rachel Letofsky, my agent at CookeMcDermid, is so supportive of my work and really champions diversity in Canadian literature. Having her on my team means I can focus on writing and editing while she takes care of the behind-the-curtain business that is the lion’s share of publishing. At the best of times, I find the business side of publishing a bit nebulous, having Rachel explain contracts, advances, territorial rights and so forth is a real advantage. I also really appreciate that she helps cultivate relationships between me, editors, and publishing teams. Because she’s a middle party, she can also ask questions on my behalf, negotiate on my behalf, and she’s also a wonderful editor who can see what I’m trying to do and offer suggestions on how I might get there.
Do you have a special memory or favourite aspect from the process of taking your book from submission to release?
One of my favourite elements of writing is process. After I’d worked through a few drafts and had some conversations with Janice, I could see a few surprising possibilities in the story that hadn’t been clear before. Playing with those threads really opened up the book. These discoveries take time.
Do you have any advice for students or alumni seeking to have their first novel published?
E.L. Doctorow maybe said it best: “Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” Probably the best way to navigate writing a novel is with patience, kindness towards yourself, and trust in the project. Giving yourself permission to just play through your first draft is such a wonderful feeling. Be open to the magic and surprises.
A novel takes time to write. It takes time to meet and learn about your characters. It takes time to map and remap and remap the story, finding links and new paths as you go. There’s a lot of scaffolding and that’s a good thing. Ask yourself questions. Ask questions of your characters. Listen to their answers; they may surprise you. Give your project room to breathe. When you finish a draft, let it sit for a bit before returning to reread it. When you do, read it as you would any other book, with a critical eye. I’d also recommend reading and practicing writing synopses because you will be asked for them.
Do you have any upcoming publications, projects or happenings that you’d like us to know about?
I’ve recently finished a poetry collection and a short story collection. I’m currently finishing up a new novel. So hopefully these will find homes sometime soon.
