The great write way

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This article was published 19/09/2022 (1439 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Frances Koncan is very busy. She’s just come back from London and is about to go to New York. She’s busy working on the 14th draft of her current play and she’ll be starting her new role as the Winnipeg Public Library’s writer-in-residence next month. There’s a lot going on in her life.

“I don’t have much time off,” she says. “I have had these kind of ongoing commissions, which is nice, but it means there is never a time you can totally turn the brain off; you are always looking for ideas and inspiration.”

Koncan’s recent London trip did provide some downtime — she was able to indulge her love of theatre.

“Every night I could go see a different play. London has such a different theatrical energy than New York. I am going to New York next week; I am again going to the theatre. That’s all I do, pretty much. I am there for two weeks and every night I am going to see something new, something I haven’t seen before.”

Koncan, who is in her mid-30s, is an accomplished writer, playwright and director. Her work has been produced on stages across the country, including at Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s Warehouse (The Women of the Fur Trade), and her writing has appeared in the arts pages of the Free Press, where she worked in 2019-20.

Her current play, the one on its 14th draft, is a reflection on capitalism and the billionaires’ race to colonize space.

“I do three passes of anything I write, at least,” she says. “But for longer creative work it’s a lot more. I have a show coming up at Prairie Theatre Exchange — it’s called Space Girl and I like to think of it as a millennial western set in space. I’ve been thinking about colonization a lot, and I thought I would explore it.”

How many drafts will she write before she’s happy with it?

“Probably draft 16 is going to be the good one. I’ve never been happy with anything I have written, but I have made peace with that. I think learning to keep going, even amidst the doubt, has been key.”

Growing up, Koncan was always interested in stories because of the way they reflected things about her own life she couldn’t articulate. It’s something she hopes her work does for others.

“I would read stories and understand them at a certain level, and they helped me find my place in the world. I still do that to discover things about myself. I want to be that guy for other people too, the same way I would discover these things, I want to be that for others.”

Her first writing she recalls was fanfic, usually Buffy (the Vampire Slayer, which to this day is her favourite TV show of all time) or X-Files, written online under a pseudonym. And unlike many writers who um and ah when asked about their favourite book, Koncan is swift to answer: Gormenghast, the 1950 fantasy novel by British author Mervyn Peake.

“I have so many, but I have been thinking about this because someone else recently asked me. It was a miniseries that I saw when I was very young and then I read the book,” she says of the tale set in the remote Castle Gormenghast, ruled over by the family Groan. “Every time I reread it I can see how influential it has been on my imagination and my vocabulary.”

This won’t be her first writer-in-residence gig; Koncan held the same role at the University of Manitoba in 2021, albeit for three months. Her library tenure will run until April 2023. It’s a position that gives writers time dedicated their own work, as well as the chance to read other writers, teach, mentor and facilitate workshops, among other things.

“It’s a really exciting role,” Koncan says, who applied for the position after being urged to by someone she knew. She sent off a sample of her work and found out she got the position in the middle of the summer.

“It came at a time when I had sent out a bunch of applications to different places. I hadn’t heard back from anyone, so I was really happy when I heard back from them.”

One of her goals while in this role is to finish her play, calling it “a top priority.” But the thing she is looking forward to the most is working with new and different writers.

“This one (the Winnipeg Public Library residency) is open to a much larger group of people. In the U of M it was only students. It will be exciting to see what other people are working on and what they are doing as writers. To see how I can support them and assist them and, not to be tacky or cringey, but to inspire them.”

Writers on the whole aren’t the type of people who shout about their work from the rooftops, she admits.

“One of the challenges will be to make myself accessible,” she says. “I would never voluntarily go see a writer-in-residence. To me, writing is so personal and I think writers tend to be private, introverted people all of the time. They are not the people who say, ‘I want to read you my story.’”

But she hopes people will be open to sharing their work with her.

“I think there is something so powerful in being vulnerable in that way and it’s a safe place to do that. It’s a place where there is no judgment. And it’s not specific; it’s not just editing. There are so many ways to looking at and talking about a piece of writing. I believe in working with writers in the way they need to be supported and not the way I think they should do it.

“Everyone is different, and everyone has different strengths and interests. I think a lot of my job is to figure out who these people are, and how to help them and guide them on that.”

Koncan’s term as writer-in-residence at the Winnipeg Public Library begins on Oct. 3 and runs until April 28, 2023. The writer-in-residence provides free consultation by email, phone and online with emerging and established Manitoba writers of all genres. Manuscripts for review can be submitted by email or by mail.

Visit wfp.to/writerinres for complete submission guidelines.

The Writer-in-Residence program is funded by the City of Winnipeg, the Winnipeg Public Library Board, the Friends of the Winnipeg Public Library, and Manitoba Sport, Culture and Heritage.

av.kitching@freepress.mb.ca