Becoming a writer
Email, the Internet, Facebook and newspapers – whether in print or online – are the enemies of writing. Reading is the enemy of writing.
© 2016, Abou Farman
Abou Farman is a Canadian artist and anthropologist teaching at the New School for Social Research in NY. He has published widely in the academic sphere as well as the popular press, with essays nominated for a National Magazine Award in Canada, selected for the Best Canadian Essays and twice awarded the Arc Critics Desk Award. His first book, Clerks of the Passage, was published by Linda Leith Publishing in 2012; a French translation by Marianne Champagne entitled Les lieux de passage was published Linda Leith Éditions in October 2016.
As part of the artist duo caraballo-farman, formed with his late partner Leonor Caraballo, Abou has exhibited work internationally in galleries, museums and other venues, including at the Tate Modern, UK; PS1/MOMA, NY, and the Havana Biennial. He is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including a Canada Council for the Arts Grant, a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. Amongst other film work and credits, he was producer on Iranian filmmaker Amir Naderi’s Vegas: Based on a True Story, which was in competition at the Venice and Tribeca Film Festivals in 2008, and is producer and co-writer of the narrative feature film Icaros: A Vision, co-directed by Leonor Caraballo and Matteo Norzi.
Email, the Internet, Facebook and newspapers – whether in print or online – are the enemies of writing. Reading is the enemy of writing.
Members of the eponymous family are so bicultural that their conversation often and readily slips from English to French. It’s difficult not to read into the author’s intent the desire to pen “a” if not “the” great Canadian novel.
We’ll be hearing a lot more about Ken Scott. So see Starbuck. (Those of you able to attend TIFF can see it there.) And then see La Grande séduction.
A garden requires walls, water, and stone.
Xstrata Treetop Walkway, Kew Gardens