Alan Reed interviewed by Vue Weekly

Alan Reed recently returned to his hometown of Edmonton to launch Isobel and Emile, his first novel. While there, he spoke with Vue Weekly about his book, his characters, and why he left Edmonton.

Vue Weekly: Part of what transpires in your novel concerns the reasons that finally help someone resolve to leave one place for another. Could you say something about your own reasons for leaving Edmonton?

Alan Reed: I left to study at Dartington. They have a truly amazing experimental writing program there, and it was the closest thing I could find to the direction my own writing was leading me. When I was ready to come back to Canada, Edmonton was suffering through the worst of the boom. The cost of living was going way up, some of my friends were having their rent go up by hundreds of dollars from one month to the next and, well, the arts is not exactly lucrative. In order to have time to write, I need to be able to get by on as little as possible ... Montréal is a weirdly easy city to get by in. That's it, really. I miss Edmonton. I have a lot of really good friends here and I wish I could spend more time with them than I do, but if I am going to write then I can't live here.

Read the whole article here.