Miramichi native David Adams Richards is this year’s Irving journalism chair at St. Thomas University.
The award-winning author and STU alumnus is the first native New Brunswicker to hold the position.
Michael Camp, the chair of STU’s journalism department, said many of STU’s previous Irving journalism chairs have practiced ordinary, day-to-day journalism. Camp expects Richards’s background in long-form journalism, poetry, non-fiction literature and drama will shed light on unconventional forms of the craft.
Richards will host a public lecture and question-and-answer session Thursday, Oct. 23 at 7 p.m. in the Kinsella Auditorium titled “Playing the Inside Out: Integrity in the Written Word.” The lecture will explore the theme of expressing truth in writing and the importance of experience and individuality.
Richards will also work with students and teach a master class about non-fiction writing in the fall term.
Richards has been a writer-in-residence at several other colleges and universities across Canada, including the University of New Brunswick. He is one of just three writers to win a Governor General’s Award in both the fiction and non-fiction categories, and in 2009, he was named to the Order of Canada.
Describe yourself, your background and any recognition you have received for your work.
I was born in Newcastle – now part of Miramichi – in 1950. I went to high school there, then I attended St. Thomas University for three years. I quit to finish my first novel, The Coming Of Winter, which was published in 1974. I have published some 25 books to date, and have recently finished two novels and a collection of essays which will be published over the next three or four years. My last published novel was Crimes Against My Brother (2014), and it was optioned for a television series last month. I have written fiction and non-fiction, commentary and essays, poetry and screen plays. I have won most of the major awards in this country, like the Governor General’s Award for both fiction and non-fiction, and the Giller Prize, and I am grateful for that. I am grateful as well to hold this position this year. I have honourary doctorates from four universities and was awarded a belated Bachelor of Arts degree from STU a few years ago, of which I am proud. I am a member of the Order of Canada and Order of New Brunswick.
Can you explain your position as STU’s Irving journalism chair?
The position is one where I am available to students, willing to read their essays, journalistic or otherwise and give advice that I have gained over the years as a writer myself. It is a position that is not at all unlike a writer-in-residence position I have held in many places. I hold a course on narrative writing with about eight students who I meet once or twice a week.
Why do you feel you earned the position this year?
Earned or not, I cannot say. That is up to others. However, I think I can give many students advice on their writing, no matter where they want it to take them. I have in fact done this in a variety of ways and with many dozens of students and writers for almost 40 years now. Some, whose work I first read and gave advice, went on to publish and a few became well-known.
Can you reflect on what you’re doing as part of the position?
I have enough time to talk to any student who wishes to discuss their writing. There are students from high school and even the University of New Brunswick who have visited my office.
Talk about your upcoming lecture and what you plan to discuss.
It’s about the integrity of the written word and how integrity can only come from the writer and be maintained by him or her as a sacred duty. It is a sacred duty to write how you feel you must, and not how institutions or peer pressure tell you, you must. It is the hardest of lessons to learn, but it can’t be taught so much as understood. Although I am speaking mainly of fiction writers in this talk, I think it crosses all boundaries pertaining to the ethics of the written word.
Where you maybe aren’t always exposed to academics, what do you think about them and about working alongside of them as Irving journalism chair?
That’s like asking me what I think about fly fishermen, carpenters or mechanics. My answer for all four would be the same. I know many and like some very much. Some have become life-long friends, whose opinions I value tremendously. Some not so much. But that is the way of the world, I think.
