Author Ann Pearson, a former UBC instructor, wasn’t forced to retire at age 60. Enjoying good health and energy, she chose to retire.
“I retired at 60 as my mother was ill and I wanted to be free to go back to England to spend time with her,” says Ann. “After her death, I wrote the story of her life, which had been marked by much sadness. Telling my mother’s story seemed to release something in me, and I haven’t stopped writing since.”
Ann didn’t write the story for commercial purposes, rather she penned the memoir for friends, family and the younger generation.
“I got the idea sitting by her bedside in the hospital and thinking that the nice young nurses who saw her as a tiny, helpless old woman had no idea of what a pretty woman she’d once been or how much sadness she had experienced over her lifetime. The memoir was also an outlet for grief, but in telling her story, I found a voice. Or perhaps even more, the process of trying to recreate the past for the younger generation and the satisfaction of finding the right words, of pinning something down, made me want to continue writing.”
Ann grew up in Suffolk, England, bordering Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south. Despite the sadness of losing her father when she was six, Ann had a happy childhood with freedom to roam the woods and fields around her home.
The family eventually moved to Ipswich, a small town on the River Orwell that now features a picturesque waterfront lined with cafés, galleries and shops, but was then a working dockyard still showing bomb damage from World War II.
Leaving Ipswich, Ann was off to study at the University of London.
“My eyes were opened,” she says. “It wasn’t yet the swinging London of the late sixties, but it introduced me to a larger world and people from many different backgrounds.”
For the first six months, Ann lived in a series of “bedsits,” which allowed her the freedom to discover different London neighbourhoods.
“Sometimes, I paid a lower rent in exchange for babysitting.”
At the University of London, Ann achieved a BA in French and Spanish. Her course also comprised a year as a teaching assistant at a French school in the Pyrenees, a range of mountains in southwest Europe that forms a natural border between Spain and France.
Once she graduated, she moved to Vancouver. She had met her husband at university, and they decided living in Canada for a year would be a wonderful experience. A year turned into two and, inevitably, Vancouver became home.
“I ended up several thousand miles away from the world that originally shaped me, although I still get homesick for the English countryside.”
At UBC, Ann received a PhD in literature. After teaching for almost a decade, she felt she needed a break from the academic world and had other passions and interests she wanted to pursue. Her next career stop was as a self-employed gardener.
“I enjoyed my clients and their gardens but didn’t make much money and I was on my own by then. So, I went back to teaching, only this time in a new context.”
Ann returned to UBC to teach a different type of program.
“The Arts One program at UBC is a first-year introduction to some of the world’s most significant philosophical and literary works and very stimulating to teach,” she says. Another course Ann enjoyed teaching was women’s writing. “I was broadening my horizons and my students challenged me further, making me rethink some of my unexamined preconceptions.”
While teaching at the university, Ann met her partner Allan, a history professor.
After writing her mother’s story, which she never published, Ann became addicted to the craft. Her debut novel, A Promise On The Horizon, takes place during the year 1811 when Napoleon’s empire incorporated almost the entire Italian peninsula. As her story evolved, two French travellers meet on the road to Milan – a brash young man, bored with his official career and a shy, secretive woman, desperate to escape the narrow confines of a provincial life. Both are drawn to Italy’s classical and artistic heritage, but the Italy they encounter is a country in the ferment of social and political change. Opened to new ways of seeing by their Italian experiences, both travellers glimpse the possibility of a different life.
Upon completion of a novel, the next step is usually finding an agent or a publisher, but Ann had different thoughts on the matter.
“I knew that writing a first novel later in life would make it hard – if not impossible – to find an agent since I wasn’t a 30-year old with a long career ahead of me,” says Ann. “Few publishers will look at manuscripts by unrepresented authors; I decided to self-publish and find a press that produced handsome books. As soon as I met Jo Blackmore in her tiny office at Granville Island Publishing, I knew I was in good hands.”
As Ann continues promoting her book, she reflects on what inspired her to tackle a book that took almost a decade to research and write.
“Growing up in England made me very interested in history and then, because I was raised within a strong religious tradition but discovered very different ways of thinking at university, I’ve always looked for the alternative story or interpretation, which is a very important part of studying history.”
Today, Ann is far from finished writing.
“Now that I’ve finally let it go (her first published novel), I’ve started on a second book, set in the same period but in England this time, with a very different cast of characters. I hope it won’t take as long to write as the first,” she says.
“I spend my days alone creating an imaginary world. Writing is solitary and obsessive – I can’t wait to get to my desk every morning. I hope that the immense amount of research historical fiction involves and the challenge of creating many different characters and their stories in my head will keep my brain active for the rest of my life.”
A Promise on the Horizon is available at Indigo and on Amazon. There’s also an electronic version. For more information, visit www.annpearsonauthor.com
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