Long-time Windspeaker contributor heading to Wilfred Laurier

Very few writers in Canada can actually make a living from
their writing. Writer Drew Hayden Taylor is one of those writers. A member of Curve Lake First Nation near Peterborough, Ont., Taylor is a novelist, playwright, short story writer, and television script writer. In a recent interview, the handsome, blue-eyed writer said, “I don’t have a day job. Writing is my full-time job and I’m very flattered that I’m able to do that.”

Taylor’s diversified writing portfolio recently earned him the appointment of the Edna Staebler Laurier Writer in Residence at Wilfred Laurier University, a four-month position he starts in January 2016.

Taylor was chosen from a group of 20 applicants. It’s a
full-time position that comes with an office and a house. Forty per cent of his time, he’ll be engaged with the university and local communities, doing lectures, public readings, and offering advice to the aspiring writers among the students and faculty.

The remainder of his time will be devoted to a writing project and, “right now, I’m juggling two or three ideas on books I want to write while I’m there,” said Taylor. “I might work on the second draft of a novel called Chasing Painted Horses. Or maybe I’ll work on another project.”

Taylor isn’t even close to running out of story ideas. The
key to being a writer, he said, is having the ability “to observe, the ability to sit there and soak in the world, the ability to watch, to listen, to understand and to just appreciate what an interesting world we live in.” The Native community “is always providing lots and lots of interesting material to explore,” he said.

Coming from an oral culture taught him about dialogue, he
said. Growing up in the community, sitting around the kitchen table, drinking tea and telling funny stories were his tutorials for writing dialogue. “It provided me with a real advantage,” he said.

Taylor’s greatest fear is that people might not want to
laugh anymore, a fear he’s not likely to confront any time soon. “I think I became successful,” he said, “because I incorporate a lot of humor into my work, or a slightly tongue-in-cheek perspective on the world. That has always been my forte, my contribution to the genre of Native literature.”

In August, Taylor celebrates the launch of his 27th book.
He’s come a long way from the five-year-old kid growing up on the reserve, sitting with a bunch of comic books, anxious to start school so he could learn to read.

“I developed a fondness for all those tales, all these stories from exotic places that found their way to the lap of this little kid
on the reserve in the middle of nowhere,” he said. “I remember thinking, wouldn’t it be cool, wouldn’t it be interesting if I could take stories from my community and then send them around the world?”

In his teens he announced his decision to be a writer. Both
his mother and his English teacher discouraged him. “Being a writer’s too difficult,” they told him, “Find something else to do!” Taylor took their advice and put his dream on hold for 10 years.

A series of fortunate accidents got him back to writing in
the 1980s. “Out of nowhere,” he recalled, “I got the opportunity to write an episode for The Beachcombers.” That qualifies as one of the most exciting things in his writing career, although there are many, he said. “I sold the script and it was produced and I remember watching it, this show I’d watched as a kid and it had, written by Drew Hayden Taylor. That was pretty exciting!”

There isn’t just one thing that’s been a defining moment or
a special moment, Taylor said. “It’s been a whole series of surprises and excitement scattered throughout 30 years of writing.” The publication and production of his first play, Toronto at Dreamer’s Rock, his first novel, and the overwhelming success of Funny You Don’t Look Like One, a collection of his articles, have all been pretty special.

He doesn’t have a favorite project either. “It’s like saying
‘who’s your favourite child’ when you have a bunch of children,” he said. “Each one came from a different place in my life at a different time, and each one has been especially fun and interesting at the time I worked on them.”

Dr. Tanis MacDonald, chair of the selection committee at
Wilfred Laurier University, said she hopes Taylor’s appointment will heighten the visibility of Aboriginal culture and deepen the discussion about the Aboriginal presence on campus.

“I think Drew will be a really good ambassador for that,”
said MacDonald.

Photo: Writer Drew Hayden Taylor, 2016 Edna Staebler Laurier Writer in Residence, Wilfred Laurier University