QWF’s latest featured member is author H. Nigel Thomas. His novels Spirits in the Dark and No Safeguards were nominated for the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction, and Des vies cassées, the French translation of Lives: Whole and Otherwise, was shortlisted for Le prix Carbet des lycéens. In 2021, he was awarded QWF’s Judy Mappin Community Award for providing guidance and support to scores of students and writers. His other accolades include the 2000 Professional of the Year Jackie Robinson Award, the 2013 Hommage aux créateurs from Université Laval, the 2020 Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award from Black Theatre Workshop, and the 2022 Canada Council for the Arts John Molson Prize. He is also the founder and English-language coordinator of Lectures Logos Readings, a bilingual reading series in Montreal. A Vincentian-Canadian, Nigel has lived in Quebec since 1968 and is a retired professor of United States literature. His most recent book, A Different Hurricane, was published by Dundurn Press earlier this month and will have a book launch at Argo Bookshop in Montreal on January 30.
QWF Communications Officer John Wickham spoke to Nigel about his new novel and what makes him keep writing, among other subjects. Here are Five Questions for H. Nigel Thomas:
1. Congratulations on the new book, A Different Hurricane! Can you tell us a bit about it?
Beginning on September 17, 2017, while Hurricane Irma is battering the Caribbean, 68-year-old Gordon Wiley becomes embroiled in another storm related to his homosexuality, which he has to this point hidden from his community. It is also the anniversary of his wife’s Maureen’s death. She learned about Gordon’s homosexuality in 2011 when she was diagnosed with AIDS. Gordon’s friend and ex-lover, Allan, an MD, took care of her. Maureen records it all in a secret journal that must remain unread for twenty-five years. But during that week, complications arise.
2. In an interview with Ian McGillis for The Gazette, you said that “Your community is your psychic mirror.” What do Gordon and Allan, the main characters of A Different Hurricane, see when they look in the mirror?
In Vincentian society, Gordon sees the opprobrium and violence that gays face, and he creates what he thinks is an error-proof façade by being a husband and father and having an overseas gay lover. Allan, however, has lovers in St Vincent. He too masks as heteronormative. Gordon could have remained in Montreal, after finishing an economics degree at Concordia. But he felt that St Vincent would be a better place to raise his daughter, Frida. In this regard he is different from most of my other male protagonists.
3. This is your fourteenth book. What keeps you writing?
Calliope—or her African counterpart—keeps me in her thrall. Seriously, I feel an urge to explore, via the imagination, that mostly opaque phenomenon called humanity. Sometimes too, as in my novels Easily Fooled and Return to Arcadia, I discover that fiction is like a dream where conflicting aspects of my being appear in disguise. It is usually long after the novel has been published and discussed that I discover the tricks that my subconscious played.
4. What’s your writing practice like? Do you have any habits or rituals?
It’s easier to write in the morning. I have no set number of hours. I work longer hours when I’m creating a first draft. There’s usually a momentum that I don’t want to lose.
5. Besides your work as a writer, you’re also the founder of the Lectures Logos Readings series. What prompted you to start it?
I have always felt that literature can bring together disparate communities. Moreover, when I returned to Montreal from Quebec City in 2006, I noted that I was often the only non-White person at literary events. I knew it was because people of non-European descent felt that such events did not reflect their ontological concerns. I created Logos, as a multicultural reading series, to address this problem.
BONUS: What are you currently reading?
Alexander MacLeod’s Animal Person
Thank you, Nigel!
A Different Hurricane is now available from Dundurn Press and in local bookstores.
Nigel will be launching the book at Argo Bookshop on Thursday, January 30. RSVP to attend.