A Centretown-raised writer who has just published her first novel will return to her home community for the Ottawa International Writers Festival this month.
Born in 1979, Saleema Nawaz went to Lisgar Collegiate Institute in the mid-1990s. She later studied at Carleton University, and Nawaz’s latest work — her debut novel, Bone and Bread — has garnered attention in recent weeks, including a feature story in the Ottawa Citizen.
Nawaz will be speaking on a panel at Knox Presbyterian Church, 120 Lisgar St., as part of an April 26 festival event called “Every Happy Family.” The panel showcases writers whose work examines family ties and the search for home, according the festival’s website.
Nawaz, over the phone from her home in Montreal, says her first novel follows two sisters and their life growing up without their parents, and being raised by their Sikh uncle.
The book takes place mainly in Montreal, but follows one of the two sisters as she moves to Ottawa.
“She goes there because she needs to get away,” Nawaz says. “She goes there because she doesn’t have any ties there, she doesn’t know anybody.”
Nawaz says the character who travels to Ottawa embodies a lot of qualities that she says are characteristic of her home city, like being more reserved or conservative in her personality.
She says the cities contrast in the book, Montreal being more political and volatile than Ottawa.
The character ends up living near LeBreton Flats, and the plot follows her to some Ottawa landmarks, including the Parliament Buildings.
Nawaz currently works at McGill University in its philosophy department, doing administrative work in what she calls the “quintessential day job.” After graduating from Carleton University with a Humanities degree, she did a Masters degree in English at the University of Manitoba.
While at the University of Manitoba in 2006, Nawaz won the award for best creative thesis. Prior to Bone and Bread, Nawaz had a book of short stories, Mother Superior, published in 2008.
Nawaz says one course she took in Ottawa was particularly inspirational. When Nawaz was studying at Carleton, she signed up for a fiction-writing workshop with contract instructor Rick Taylor.
Taylor says Nawaz was the best student in the group that year.
“Unlike many young peoples who want to write, Saleema's desire to write and be a writer was based on real talent,” he said in an email. “From my perspective, her writing had a deep, dark literary edge that was exciting and a pleasure to read. I shamelessly praised her writing in the workshop.”
Nawaz says her classmates in that group were also inspirational to her.
Taylor says he and Nawaz have kept in touch sporadically since she graduated from Carleton.
Melanie Little was Nawaz’s editor for Bone and Bread, and says she and Nawaz worked together on four drafts before the book was published. Little says Nawaz is a perfectionist and a careful reviser of her own work.
“(She) is a hugely intelligent and receptive author to edit,” Little says. “Over the course of two years or so, and the story got more finely tuned each time.”
Taylor says he’s proud to see Nawaz published with Bone and Bread and Mother Superior.
“I couldn't be more thrilled for her,” he said. “No one has worked as hard as Saleema to follow her dreams to be a writer.”