On Tuesday, November 7, Francis Itani was the guest writer at Trent’s Writers Reading Series, which took place in the Junior Common Room (JCR) of Scott House at Catherine Parr Traill College. Francis is a writer born in Belleville, Ontario, and has published 13 works, including novels, poetry, short stories, and children’s books. The JCR was packed wall-to-wall with community members, professors, and students anxiously waiting for the reading to begin.
Promptly at 7PM, Lewis MacLeod started off the night with some personal anecdotes about Itani, which let the audience members in on the personal life of the writer. He compared the act of writing about music with ‘dancing to architecture’: “It is said that when you write about music, you are making it other than it is,” he commented jokingly. He then explained with a smile, “Itani is able to bring things to life through her writing”.
Itani’s works are those of historical fiction with some inspiration coming from the art of music and performance. She has done excessive amounts of research involving people who are deaf, and she had to immerse herself in the deaf community in order to build her character for her book Deafening. Itani has also looked into music of World War I and accessed the archives of the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.
She explained that music is a vital part of the process of her work, and therefore turns up often in her own writing. She claimed to not be a musician wished to “[blow] her musical horn,” which she accomplishes in her writing. Itani went on to read from three of her works Deafening, Requiem, and Tell.
Her selection from her novel Deafening was about Grania (the protagonist of the novel) and her husband, Jim. They discuss his singing and she accurately describes how a deaf person would experience music. Through humming and resonance of sound through the body, the character is able to experience her husband’s singing without being able to hear. Itani talks about the diaphragm being the “origin of someone’s song.” It was a beautiful passage and the audience was absorbed in her descriptions.
In Requiem, she talks about the incarceration of Japanese Canadians in WWII. Itani considered the idea of a musician who would have been a camp prisoner without their instruments or their music. Her unique inspiration comes from her husband, who is a survivor of these internment camps, and from her son, a musician. Itani listened to Beethoven during the writing of Requiem and took apart the movements that represent chaos and redemption. She gracefully read from the beginning of the book when the character’s wife dies. Imagery of nature is portrayed through musical instruments such as the piano and the flute. Itani read about the boy in the camp and his makeshift keyboard made of pine, a passage so descriptive that it was uplifting and depressing all at once; truly a moving piece.
Itani has a soft and fluid voice. It was easy to listen to and the audience sunk into their seats comfortably while listening to her beautiful prose. No one fidgeted or even shifted. They listened to her graceful words, soft yet articulate. All were feeling comfortable and intrigued which allowed for her to continue reading with ease.
In her final reading Tell, Itani describes a soprano raised on a farm. Inspired by beautiful singers at her school in Belleville, Itani writes about those that could have become famous if they were given the money and opportunity. For Tell, she really wanted the singer to have an untrained voice. Itani explains how she felt the need to educate herself on musical language and jargon so she decided to sit in on choral groups in Ottawa to do research.
She read a short passage from Tell that describes the process of getting into music, including the audition process and the beginnings of the protagonist’s career. It was relatable and flowed as a conversation between two performers. She effectively captured the emotions and atmosphere of singing in a choir.
Itani was very comfortable when she described her writing process including the places she went, the research she did, the people she spoke to, the music she listened to, and the ideas that came to her while creating her work. This was shared information that helped enlighten the audience about what kind of process was involved in writing a book. The time and research put into her work was astonishing.
Itani likes to work by hand and she likes to keep notes for short story ideas. She admits that, when writing a novel, it takes over and she is consumed. She is not doing much work on her short stories at this time.
What is she working on next?
Itani’s next novel will be a sequel; years in the future, ahead of the novel Tell. This means a “clean slate for the character,” Itani shared excitedly. It will take place in WWII. Deafening was the prequel to Tell and she is in the process of producing a third, which will end the trilogy “for good,” she said, laughing.
What is her advice for students aspiring to be writers?
When she was the age of a student, Itani sat in the audience of an accomplished author’s reading and someone had asked that same question. The answer was “[j]ust to never give up. And to read. A lot”.
Has she ever had any flaws in her research?
With Deafening, Itani gets comments on her research regularly. A Canadian military officer who read her book wrote her, saying, “I just finished reading Deafening, I could not find a mistake.” Although her research is very thorough, she admitted that there was one mistake. In Tell, her description of the shape of the moon in December 1914 was not accurate according to an astronomer. Itani laughed and told her audience that she now has an app on her phone that can tell her everything she needs to know about the moon in any year and any time as a result of this mistake.
What kind of music does she listen to for pleasure?
Itani had a straightforward answer: “[D]uring the day I listen to classical, jazz at night, and I love choral music, but I generally like all kinds.”
Overall, it was an extremely enjoyable event. It was pleasant to listen to such beautiful works and it was inspiring to hear about her writing process. All who attended Itani’s reading were impressed and certainly eager to read her work if they had not already done so.