7

I grew up so shy. The fact that I’m a writer who works on stages with large audiences blows child Josh’s mind. I used to get so terrified or nervous for any presentation—dripping with sweat and stuttering. Toward the end of high school, I started sharing and going to work-shops with other people interested in writing. I started to find my confidence in my own writing voice. I knew my strongest most stal-wart ability as a person was being a storyteller. It’s persona work, like theatre. Then I was in Winnipeg doing my undergraduate, and I only just left school a few months ago having finished my PhD.

Winnipeg was formative for me—doing my undergraduate in English Honours at University of Winnipeg. I was part of a journal that the English Department put out called Juice. I started as a contributor and then as an editor—and Winnipeg was full of these open mic nights all through the downtown core.

There’s a street called Osborne where all the anarchists and the musicians and the punks go. Then Corydon, another street, Little Italy, where all the musicians play.

There’s a beautiful intersection at that end, as well as St. Boniface, the French part of town, where the visual artists are. All three meet—which is the beautiful thing about Winnipeg. The Red River sets it up so wonderfully, with the Forks. There is such a strong creative hub there.

So, I’d go to these open mic nights in a dingy basement, and there would be poets and rappers and jazz musicians and spoken word artists. Artists of all types. We’d do improv sessions, working together and riffing off each other. That practice honed my orality and helped build my confidence in artistry. I could bring those oral skills and that performance scene back to my writing.

Jonny Appleseed is very infused with the gritty artistry of Winnipeg that was so formative to my early twenties, as I was starting to become a writer.

animated adjective

1) Filled with activity, vigour, or spirit; lively.

2) Made or depicted using animation.

3) Endowed with life; full of life or spirit; indicating animation; lively; vigorous.

avatar noun

1) An electronic image that represents and may be manipulated by a computer user (as in a game).

I remember walking down Ellice Avenue, another street just off the University of Winnipeg campus, adjacent to that creative hub. I was taking notes on the graffiti and the trash and the mundane things that nobody sees. From that, I wrote a poem, and it became the first poem I ever published, in Prairie Fire. I remember getting my cheque for $100 payment for that publication, and it’s been a snowball effect since then. I was working long hours and writing poems for pennies and performing in the streets of Winnipeg for free … and now, being the emerging writer that I am, and sitting on the stage of Canada Reads blows my mind still—that I’ve achieved that level of optics in a short span of time.

But I never write in a vacuum. Everything I’ve crafted and made has been a whirlwind of community and folks and friends and lovers and family. I kind of write as an animated avatar. A lot of my material comes from listening fiercely to those around me and witnessing that which is discarded or not seen.