“I’m always interested in the ocean or the water as a site of so many things – travel, exile, homecoming – as well as the physical elements of what the sea can do and how it’s changing,” Kumagai shares, adding the theme also encompasses climate change concerns.

The series’ first talk, “Rising Tides,” features local writer Christine Lai. The two will discuss memory, nature and time in their respective literary works on Sept. 24 at Green College’s Coach House.

Turning a new page

Kumagai has written two young adult novels: Catfish Rolling and Songs for Ghosts. The former won the 2024 KPMG Children’s Books Ireland Book of the Year and was nominated for the 2024 YOTO Carnegie Medal. While she has also written specifically for an adult audience, Kumagai feels drawn to writing young adult fiction.

“Teenage characters of this time are trying to situate themselves in the world, and a lot of it can centre around identity and relations with others,” she shares.

Inspired by the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, Catfish Rolling is speculative fiction exploring time and memory. It also touches on grief, as the main character lost her mother, who is presumed dead, in the earthquake.

“There was a huge earthquake in the world of the book, and it broke time in different places,” she shares. “Catfish Rolling is a lot about memory: how we preserve it or what we need to let go.”

Released in Canada last month, her second novel, Songs for Ghosts, reimagines Madame Butterfly by drawing on different narratives, including Japanese folklore. It also resembles historical fiction – all the while engaging with the genre of ghost stories.

“A ghost story is always about history,” Kumagai shares. “It’s also tied to the idea of the gothic: what has been hidden? What’s been purposely or accidentally forgotten?”

Kumagai hopes to finish a draft of her next project during this residency. She looks forward to engaging with readers and non-readers at public events – fostering the type of community that writers need.

“Writing is very solitary a lot of the time,” she shares. “Sometimes you’re sending [your writing] out, and you’re like, ‘Is it in the void? Who is relating to this?’”

Textual dialogues

Lai’s debut novel Landscapes also engages with themes of time and memory. It was named a CBC and NPR Best Book of the Year. The author sees Landscapes as exploring the “presentness of the past” – particularly how the past “bleeds into” the present.

“Time isn’t necessarily a linear concept; it’s something that is cyclical and even circular,” she adds.

This pull towards the past is connected to the objects and images surrounding Lai’s character. Set in a near-future English country house, Landscapes follows a character archiving the estate’s art collection. Lai sees the novel as blurring boundaries between genres.

“It’s a diary novel, primarily, and it’s also a country house novel, and there are bits of art criticism and art history woven in,” she adds. “My goal was to create these different layers and to play with what defines the literary.”

A lifelong lover of literature, Lai holds a PhD in English literature from University College London. She is also a graduate of Simon Fraser University’s The Writer’s Studio program. She sees Landscapes as engaged in conversations with other texts and writers.

“I really wanted to respond to a lot of the artworks that I’ve been studying and looking at for a number of years,” Lai adds. “For me, writing is like a dialogue.”

Landscapes also references environmental changes, such as rising water levels and flooding. When considering how literature can address climate change, Lai sees art as a collective that can “shift the zeitgeist” – encouraging people to think in different ways.

“Reading on the news about a disaster is so different from entering the perspective of the character living through it,” adds Kumagai. “[Novels] allow us to access experience in a really different way.”

The other events of this series will take place on Oct. 16, Oct. 29 and Nov. 19. At each event, Kumagai will be joined by a guest: songwriter/vocalist Leah Abramson, playwright/screenwriter Justin Neal and writer/lawyer Saeed Teebi,
respectively.

For more information on the event, see: www.greencollege.ubc.ca/events/rising-tides

For more information on Clara Kumagai, see: www.clarakumagai.com

For more information on Christine Lai, see: www.christine-lai.com