Amanda Hale has been writing for as long as she can remember.
“I wrote my first novel at age 11,” she says. “It was an illustrated work, a love story between two frogs set against the rich cultural background of the rock ’n’ roll era – Bill Haley and the Comets, Elvis Presley, Little Richard.”
Inevitably, the frogs depart England, journey to the US for their honeymoon, stopover at a dude ranch, go dancing and end the night with a movie. The book young Amanda wrote, in some ways, became a metaphor for her life.
She departed England in her 20s and settled in Montreal where she studied at Concordia University for six years. There, Amanda became consumed with playwriting.
“Having been a listener for 28 years, I had developed a good ear for dialogue.” Her studies also included the visual arts. “Since then, I have bounced back and forth between the visual arts and literary worlds, often combining them in art installations, especially during the 1980s in Toronto where I was involved in theatre, journalism and the visual arts as a feminist and social activist.”
Her social activism was no doubt inspired by her father’s actions during WWII, which inspired her most recent book, Mad Hatter.
It was 1943 and WWII was still raging. Amanda hadn’t met her father yet. In fact, she wasn’t born until the war took him away.
“As a loyal member of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, he had been interned throughout the war in various prisons, ending up on the Isle of Man with thousands of other men and some women – concentrated in camps, in detention without trial,” says Amanda.
In her mid-fifties, Amanda began to research Mad Hatter, which turned into a quest project to gather more information about her father and family.
“My father’s experience of detainment began with his arrest at our home in June 1940,” she says. “He was taken to Walton Gaol near Liverpool, where he remained in solitary until early August when he was moved to Ascot Camp with 750 men to be housed in the winter quarters of Ringling’s circus animals.”
“He was taken to Latchmere House in London for special interrogation by MI5,” Amanda continues. “This outfit was run by Lieutenant-Colonel Robin Stephens, nicknamed ‘Tin-Eye’ for the monocle he wore.”
Upon returning home, Amanda’s father showed signs of what modern psychiatrists would label PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) but in those days was known as “shell shock.” Almost a decade later, he took his own life.
While researching the project, Amanda was stunned by the information she discovered. It was life changing.
“A big moment was finding a newspaper clipping saying that my father had been taken to court in 1953 for child support of an infant girl. This confirmed what my mother had sometimes hinted at. Five years after posting information on Geneology.com about this supposed half-sister, I received an email confirming that Anne was indeed my half-sister and lived in New Zealand. She travelled to England to meet me and my two sisters.”
Rewind two decades and Amanda was writing her first literary novel, Sounding the Blood. The novel was published by Raincoast Books in 2001 and was inspired by Amanda’s visit to the ruins of a whaling station at Rose Harbour on Haida Gwaii. The novel was a finalist for the BC Relit Awards and was voted one of the Top Ten novels of 2001 by Toronto’s prestigious Now Magazine.
Amanda’s second novel The Reddening Path was published by Thistledown Press in 2007. Following, My Sweet Curiosity was considered for the 2010 Relit award for fiction. Amanda has also published two poetry chapbooks, Crocodile Sugar in 2005 with Lynn Hutchinson, and Pomegranate, a tale of remembering in 2007.
Amanda’s poetry and short stories have appeared in countless Canadian and US magazines. In 2008, she won the Prism International Creative Non-Fiction Award for The Death of Pedro Iván and was a finalist for the Malahat Review’s Creative Non-Fiction Award with Señora Amable Ponce.
At 75, Amanda is still as motivated to write as the 11-year-old child who created the story about anthropomorphized frogs.
“I write to make sense of things,” she says. “Writing is an activity, together with painting and sculpture, that has literally saved my life, which makes me as I make it. I used to think there were solutions to be reached, answers to be discovered, but there are no answers, only the slow and painstaking examination of all the evidence as we creep forward.”
Through writing, painting and sculpting, Amanda has learned a lot about herself and the world she lives in.
“I have learned patience through writing. Novels, poems, short stories, paintings and sculpture are living things and require the utmost care and attention to bring them fully to life. There must be passion – without it, who can afford such care?”
Amanda will be returning to her home on Hornby Island for the winter, while promoting her new book, Mad Hatter, in Vancouver, Victoria, the Gulf Islands, libraries, universities and colleges.
Amanda Hale is available for bookclubs, readings and author presentations in Victoria, Vancouver and on Vancouver Island. To learn more, visit www.amandahale.com or www.guernicaeditions.com and search Amanda Hale.
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