Upcoming Dusty Owl Reading -- thoughts

Bytown or Ottawa? Michelle or Nichole?

I never wanted an alter ego, a character who might be identified with me, who had enough in common with me for a reader to think Look! Autobiographical stuff. But Nichole Wright in my novel Sky Waves kinda came out that way ... Nichole worked in radio, studied at Carleton University in 1989 and the early 1990s – majored in English, too, the copycat – even took a job in a downtown Ottawa mall, just like me. Okay, I get silly at that point, having Nichole work at an office supply store called Bigge and Wiggles, whereas I worked for Grand and Toy, but still, Nichole's course arcs close to mine. Until we get to her destructive coke habit and unplanned pregnancy and connected breakdown – fiction, right? So beyond asking the question of why we tend to privilege art that we think we know it autobiographical, I feel almost queasy about travelling to Ottawa to give a reading as part of the Dusty Owl Series. Excited, too -- Ottawa's a second home, a city where I lived for nearly ten years and put down taproots. My first daughter was born in Ottawa. A puntload of friends live in Ottawa. And that winter cold, that dry smack upside the face with microscopic ice – I'll be striding off that plane with arms open wide ... well, metaphorically ... craving the familiar and strange, old and new, and not minding how Nichole hovers along for the ride.