'It's still sinking in': First-time Winnipeg author shortlisted for Governor General's Literary Awards

A first-time author’s book of essays detailing her haunting escape from a long-term, abusive relationship has landed her on the shortlist for this year’s Governor General’s Literary Awards.

Winnipeg-based writer Rowan McCandless received the news she made the shortlist last month.

“I think it's still sinking in,” McCandless told CTV Morning Live Winnipeg’s Nicole Dubé in an interview Tuesday.

The book called “Persephone’s Children: A Life in Fragments” is a series of thematically linked and structurally inventive essays in which McCandless explores “the fraught and fragmented relationship between memory and trauma.”

In addition to making the shortlist for the Governor General’s Literary Awards, the book also won McCandless the Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book.

She said the book stems from a challenge issued by her eldest daughter for their family to find ways of using their creativity.

“So I started writing, and then all of these wonderful things happened with the book and I was just amazed,” McCandless recalls.

She said the stories shared in the book were difficult to write about, but delving into them in a series of essays made it easier. She calls the format a mosaic memoir, which contains chapters in a non-linear fashion, as if they were a patchwork quilt.

McCandless chose this style because it resembles what it’s like to recollect trauma.

“They're stored in pockets, fragments, that when you put them together, it's like creating a stained glass window,” she said.

McCandless said she’s been amazed at the book’s trajectory and success.

Ultimately, however, she did not write it for recognition or awards, but for readers who can identify with her experience.

“Telling this story, even though it was difficult, it was important to do,” she said. “I felt like there was someone that just needed to read that book. So a lot of authors do this, they write to this one person, and then you just send it off into the world and the rest is up to the universe.”

- With files from CTV's Nicole Dubé