WHAT MADE ME THINK THAT GOING TO MONTREAL in the middle of February would somehow shake me out of my seasonal depression? The free flight from Prince Edward Island? The free hotel room for the two days of this literary conference? The opportunity of networking with other writers, editors, illustrators, publishers, agents and educators from around the country? The moment I arrived at the massive conference room and sat at my assigned table, waiting for the nine others who’d also been assigned here to show up, I regretted putting my name in for the lottery to win the free airfare, registration cost and hotel room so I could put in my two cents on how to fix the state of Canadian publishing.
The lottery was sponsored by the national arts council that had organized this two-day shindig and available only to writers from PEI and the Northwest Territories, they being the two areas most under-represented at council meetings. To the best of my knowledge, I was the only Island writer in attendance.
I KNEW SHE WOULD BE AT THE CONFERENCE from the list of participants included in the emailed rundown of what to expect during these two days. I worried at first about the possibility of running into her, fretting for a few days, constantly changing my mind about whether I would go or not. When I kept seeing how many people would be at the conference, I convinced myself that it was a longshot we would run into each other and
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Steven Mayoff (he/him) was born in Montreal and moved to Prince Edward Island in 2001. His fiction and poetry have appeared in literary journals across Canada, the U.S. and abroad. His books include the story collection Fatted Calf Blues (Turnstone Press, 2009), the novel Our Lady of Steerage (Bunim & Bannigan, 2015), the poetry chapbook Leonard’s Flat (Grey Borders Books, 2018) and the poetry collection Swinging Between Water and Stone (Guernica Editions, 2019) and the novel The Island Gospel According to Samson Grief (Radiant Press, 2023).