A Woman of Words

The NDG author and founder of Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival, the world's only multilingual literary festival, and what is affectionately referred to as Blue Met around town, has graciously taken time out of her busy schedule, to sit down with us over coffee on Monkland Avenue and discuss her latest book, "Marrying Hungary".

Unlike her previous novels, "Birds of Passage", "The Desert Lake" and "The Tragedy Queen", which borrow liberally from her life experiences, yet remain fictional in nature, "Marrying Hungary" is the very personal and touching memoir of her own life story, as the daughter of Irish communists who moves to Canada and falls in love with a Hungarian refugee. The story chronicles her nomadic childhood in Basel, Brussels, London, and Paris, her tumultuous relationship with an impossible, yet fascinating, father, her love affair with Andy, the man she would marry and have children with, and her eventual coming of age, both as a woman and as a writer.

Was penning something so personal worrisome to her? "When writing about what actually took place and mentioning real people, you inevitably have concerns," she says. "But, I find it sad that people (parents) die unexpectedly every day and only then do you realize how little you knew about them. I wanted my sons to know where they come from, because there comes a time when these things are important."

Writing her memoir during her divorce was also a way for Leith to go back in time and re-live her days of newfound love and young motherhood, a time that undoubtedly held sweet memories for her. "We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection," wrote French writer, Anaïs Nin, and one supposes that this yearning is ever-present in most people's desire to pen their memoirs.

Leith is a quiet writer. She doesn't display the fanfare and bombastic wordplay of other wordsmiths, preferring to slowly allow her story to unfold and take hold of you. Her most poignant moments – the ones that tug at your heartstrings- are the ones relayed in a very matter-of-fact way, bringing to mind essayist and critic Logan Pearsall Smith and his observation about liking in a writer "not what he says, but what he whispers." Before you know it, Leith has you hooked and you want to know where this journey will take her.

Leith is also quiet in person, silently observing you as you talk, allowing you so much time for your own reflections that you run the risk of forgetting you're the one interviewing her. You silently suspect she might quietly be gathering material for her next book. "Marrying Hungary" has garnered favour with both reviewers and readers alike, something that pleases Leith to no end. "I'm very happy that this book seems to be touching people more than any other books I've written and on so many different levels."

From January to April, however, this NDG author of seven critically well-received books barely does any writing at all, instead putting most of her efforts in directing the hugely successful Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival.

This year will mark the festival's 11th edition and it promises to be a veritable smorgasbord of Quebec, Canadian and foreign writers. "We started in 1997 with 57 writers participating and about 1,500 people attending and last year we had 350 writers from around the world and an audience of 16,000," Leith says with the obvious pride of a mother praising her over-achieving child.

According to Leith, Blue Met is a friendly and convivial literary fair, where no physical barriers are set up between writers and the people who love to read what they write. In other words, Blue Met is a party, a celebration of words and writing and what books mean to us all. It's an opportunity for writers to temporarily abandon their solitary world and break bread with one another, rejoice in each other's achievements and allow voracious readers to attend panel discussions, ask questions, have books signed and take part in this multilingual, multicultural throng, taking place in a city that was simply tailor made for such an event!

The ease with which Leith allows all languages and all cultures to intermix and commingle during her festival is truly representative of the ease with which Montreal treats us all. "I am most at home when I don't fully understand what is going on around me," writes Leith, of living in a foreign city and hearing a foreign language around her, in "Marrying Hungary". The same sentiment seems to apply to many of us living in this city, as well. "Blue Met has met with extraordinary success because it came at exactly the right time," she explains. "It ignored previously established cultural and linguistic pockets and threw everything all in together." Eleven years later, the gamble seems to have paid off brilliantly. Linda Leith's latest book, "Marrying Hungary", published by Signature Editions, is available in fine bookstores everywhere. The 11th Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival takes place from April 22-26. For more information on this year's schedule, you can log on to: www.bluemetropolis.org