Méira Cook turns Winnipeg into the centre of her fictional universe
Méira Cook is a poet and artist born in Johannesburg and now living in Winnipeg — the place where her latest novel is set. Once More With Feeling tells the story of the city through the interconnected lives of the characters who live and work there.
Accidental stories
"I was enjoying writing short stories, which was a new genre for me. Just to give them some structure, I decided that I would write them over the course of a year, with each story taking place in a different month. My characters go through their lives and the seasons turn along with them — there's a trajectory for the characters. At the end of this, when I started rereading them, I realized the stories were linked in ways that I hadn't expected; characters kept appearing and changing the narrative. It relates to how I see Winnipeg in that we all feel that we are characters in an autonomous story, but in fact we are parts of a larger novel."
Winnipeg life imitating art
"Winnipeggers feel a great sense of being connected by no more than two degrees of separation — we don't have the conventional six. I like that idea that we can be connected by our knowledge of each other and our knowledge of each other's stories."
Méira Cook's comments have been edited and condensed.