Feisty, driven, and uncompromising, octogenarian Alma Lee exemplifies the adage “no surrender.”
Recipient of the YWCA Women of Distinction Award, an honorary doctorate from Simon Fraser University and a member of the Order of Canada, Alma’s perhaps best known as the co-founder of the Vancouver Writers Festival, an ongoing annual extravaganza that introduces thousands of readers to novelists, poets, and essayists. Ancillary programs such as workshops and readings continue throughout the year.
to write will always write
and people who are compelled to tell stories will always tell stories.”Alma Lee. Photo courtesy of John Thomson
It was no easy feat. It took Alma and her co-creator ten years of lobbying, cajoling and pleading to bring the festival to fruition. But it was worth it. As its first artistic director, a position she held for 17 years, Alma brought international recognition and prestige to Vancouver and the arts community. She still serves as a consultant when needed.
“I won’t back down,” she says unapologetically. “People call me stubborn. I prefer to call it determined.”
Born to an Edinburgh bagpipe maker who loved to read, Alma would accompany her father to the library every Friday where he scoured the shelves and she investigated the children’s section. It’s here that she developed a deep love of reading but as much as she would have loved to pursue a career in the arts, convention dictated she learn a trade and get married. Wed at 19, she emigrated to Canada in 1967 with her husband and two sons and found work in Toronto as a secretary which, she says, included lying for the boss.
“All I know is that it jarred me. I was brought up in a pretty strict Presbyterian house and lying was not the thing. So, I put on my coat, walked into his office, told him I was leaving and that I wasn’t coming back.”
The feisty newcomer resigned on a matter of principle, but it had real consequences.
“I got home. I cried a lot. I took a pad and wrote down all the things I was really good at and all the things I really loved. What came out? Literary agent. That’s what my notes said. I thought how the hell do you get to do that?”
Circumstance introduced her to novelist Margaret Atwood and disaster turned into opportunity.
“She told me I had to go to lots of parties and get a job in a publishing house. I said going to parties was not so hard but the second thing was harder.”
She did, in fact, get a job at a publishing house as the general manager of Toronto’s House of Anansi which was carving out a name for itself, aggressively publishing and promoting notable Canadian authors such as Marian Engel, Alice Munro, and Farley Mowatt.
One of them, novelist Graham Gibson, approached her and asked if she would help him organize a writers’ conference to discuss forming a professional union.
“I was nervous,” she says. “I had never done this kind of thing before,” but undeterred, she jumped in, Rolodex in hand, and brought 100 writers to Toronto to create the Writers’ Union of Canada.
Today the Union represents over 2,700 members addressing things like fees, royalties, promotion and a topic that’s especially relevant these days, artificial intelligence.
Alma remembers one of her first jobs was to negotiate a standard minimum contract with publisher Jack McLelland.
“That was one of the scariest things I ever did in my life,” she says. “He was a “heavy” and powerful. But I believed in what I was doing, and I figured he should too because he was a publisher.”
She secured the contract.
Alma helmed the Union for its first eight years as its founding executive director. Creating the Writers Trust of Canada, a charitable organization which supports writers through grants and awards followed.
In 1984, now divorced and with two teens in tow, she moved to Vancouver where she co-created the Vancouver International Writers Festival simply because, as she says, “there was a need for one.”
Again, Alma drew upon her organizational and social skills, working the phones, cajoling her friends and raising funds. She admits there were times when she thought the task was insurmountable.
“I would go to the office, put my head on the desk and cry and say, ‘What am I doing?’ I kept going because I knew it was a good idea. When I asked Tiff (Timothy) Findley to be the first writer in our program and he enthusiastically agreed, I knew we were going to be fine. I knew if he said yes, we were on the right track.”
She says her key attribute is persistence. Being organized, focused and good with people also helps.
“I’ve never been called irascible,” she says. “I’ve been called indomitable. I’m relatively patient but when I lose it, I lose it, which I’m ashamed of. I wouldn’t want to be on the other side of my wrath.”
Undaunted, many have called upon her guidance whether it’s to serve as book prize juror or to help them launch their own literary events.
“I’m not afraid to ask people for money,” she says. “I just raised $160,000 for the Carol Shields Prize.”
She does, however, acknowledge two disappointments. First, a crime writers festival failed to materialize and second, an ambitious plan to make Vancouver a designated UNESCO World City of Literature got mired in bureaucracy. Nevertheless, she says pursuing a goal gives her life structure.
“I like making a contribution, I like being part of a community and since I’ve retired, I’ve become part of another community. I’m now very involved in my local seniors’ centre and one of the things I’ve done there – I can’t help myself – is to establish a writers’ reading program where I bring in writers to read and talk to members.”
She also supports Music on Main – Alma was its founding President – a grass roots organization dedicated to bringing classical and contemporary concerts to neighbourhood venues throughout the city. Why restrict quality music to the concert hall, the organization asks.
Alma’s a regular concert-goer, but she still has time to visit two adult children and two adult grandchildren. She is also writing her first novel about a Scottish farm family in the 1950’s, not exactly autobiographical, she says, but based, in part, on her earlier experiences.
Still keenly aware of trends and issues, she knows the big publishing houses have culled their roster of mid-level artists, concentrating on bestsellers and “the next big thing,” making it difficult for artists to sustain a professional career.
She knows copyright is an ongoing issue and, like her peers, laments the ease at how “educational institutions are putting stuff through the copying machines and never even think to pay the writers.”
She’s been told bookstores are closing or amalgamating and there’s no appetite for reading. Dire news but ever the writer’s champion, she’s not distraught.
“I don’t think it’s doom and gloom,” she says. “I think storytelling is a very fundamental part of civility and civilization. It’s how we know what’s going on. How we interact with people is by telling them stories and listening to their stories.”
“I think people who are compelled to write will always write and people who are compelled to tell stories will always tell stories and whether they verbally tell those stories or write them down is kind of irrelevant.”
Like I say, no surrender.
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