Bio:
Lissa M. Cowan is the
author of Milk Fever and founder of
Writing the Body. She speaks and writes about storytelling, creativity,
work-life balance and creative spirituality. She is a Huffington Post blogger
and writes regularly for Canadian and U.S. magazines and newspapers.
She is co-translator of Words that Walk
in the Night by Pierre Morency, one of Québec’s most honoured poets.
She has been writing and telling stories in one form or another since she was
six years old and has received awards for her writing from the University of
Victoria’s Writing Department and from The Banff Centre. She is an alumna of
The Banff Centre and The Victoria School of Writing. She has had some
wonderfully talented teachers along the way such as Nino Ricci, Jane Rule and
Daphne Marlatt who have helped her hone her writing craft.
When she’s not writing or
teaching, you can most likely find her in a cafe working on one of her stories
or book ideas. She just started work on a creative non-fiction book, though
it’s too early right now to spill the beans on that one!
She holds a Master of Arts
degree in English Studies from l’Université de Montréal and lives in Toronto,
Canada.
Welcome, Lissa. Please tell us about
your current release.
Milk Fever takes place at the
time of the French Revolution. In 1789, Armande, a wet nurse who is known for
the mystical qualities of her breast milk, goes missing from her mountain
village.
Céleste, a cunning servant girl who Armande
once saved from shame and starvation, sets out to find her. A snuffbox found in
the snow, the unexpected arrival of a gentleman and the discovery of the wet
nurse’s diary, deepen the mystery. Using Armande’s diary as a map to her secret
past, Céleste fights to save her from those plotting to steal the wisdom of her
milk.
Milk Fever is a rich and inspired tale set on
the eve of the French Revolution–a delicious peek into this age’s history. The
story explores the fight for women’s rights and the rise in clandestine
literature laying bare sexuality, the nature of love and the magic of books to
transform lives.
What inspired you to write this book?
I first came across the term wet-nursing in Laurence Sterne’s Tristram
Shandy while researching for my Master’s thesis. I looked up the word,
and shortly after began to see it in many other books I was reading from the
eighteenth century—mostly ones written by French novelists. I picked up a copy
of George Sussman’s Selling
Mother’s Milk: The Wet-Nursing Business in France and was astonished to
discover that wet nursing was an industry in France similar to textiles or
porcelain.
What particularly intrigued me was a widespread belief at the time that
the thoughts of the mother who breastfed could become impressed upon the child.
I thought, what if a wet nurse existed who was educated (most of them were
not)? What would her milk be like and how—in the fantastical world of the
novel—might this influence the babies she nursed?
Excerpt:
Armande handed me a book that
felt clumsy and stiff in my hands. I pressed it with all the
strength I could bring to bear. She said the pages of books were made from
cotton and linen rags stamped into pulp, then pressed into paper and
hung to dry. I laughed at her for telling such a lie because I thought maybe she was just like my father who told tall tales to make me
behave. Rows and rows of lines she called words looked odd to me.
Many times I searched hard within every letter, every sound to find
meaning. The letters cut my tongue as thorns on a rose bush, each
one sticking to me. I could not speak the next letter until the one
before it came unstuck. Soon after the word was finally spoken, my lazy
tongue quit my mouth.Armande was on her favourite oak chair with the sagging blue leather seat and worn arms while I sat on the sofa. Suddenly Jacques stopped sucking, then gazed at me knowingly, his eyes full of light. In that instant, a slim ray of sun gleamed through a crack, lighting up the darkness inside me. My hands shook. Sweat ran down my cheeks and the back of my neck. Just as she said her father sometimes described it, we were entering a new age driven by light. And I, a peasant girl whose father and mother never held a book, would be there to witness the change.
What exciting story are you working on
next?
I’m playing
around with a few ideas, both of them potential novels or novellas. The one I’m
particularly keen to write takes place in Victorian England; another century
and country to explore!
When did you first consider yourself a
writer?
I knew I
was a writer when I was about seven years old. I won a short story contest for
a story about animals such as tigers, lions and a monkey, and never looked
back.
Do you write full-time? If so, what's
your workday like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find
time to write?
I write
full-time and write fiction part time. So in other words I work as a copywriter
for my day job, which I love, and write fiction the other part of the time. I
begin my workday writing for myself in the morning until about 1 pm. Then I do
my client work for the rest of the day. I don’t answer email in the morning and
try not to answer the phone during this time otherwise it’s hard to get back
into what I’m writing.
What would you say is your interesting
writing quirk?
I water the
plants in between writing spurts and I usually talk to the plants as I go.
Obviously I don’t water them everyday, but when I do, it’s usually when I need
a writing break to let something percolate. My plants know all my deepest
thoughts and worries.
As a child, what did you want to be
when you grew up?
A writer.
Anything additional you want to share
with the readers?
Just that
writing isn’t easy. I love what I do, but it’s hard work and takes dedication
and commitment to stick with it. Sometimes people think that if you’re good at
writing, then it must come easily. I did about 30 revisions of my novel and so
I might even say that it becomes harder to write because each time you produce
something, you set the bar higher.
