Anna Bowen interviews Guelph novelist Claire Tacon about her new novel, In Search of the Perfect Singing Flamingo.

The novel is written from four points of view: that of Starr, a young woman in her twenties with Williams Syndrome; her sister, Melanie; her father, Henry; and Darren, an employee at Frankie’s Funhouse who works with Henry. You can hear Claire reading an excerpt from Darren’s perspective near the end of the podcast.

Claire Tacon is a Guelph-based novelist and the author of In the Field (Biblioasis 2011), which was the winner of the Metcalf-Rooke award. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia, lectures at St. Jerome’s University, and produces micro-fiction podcast The Oddments Tray with Chioke I’Anson. Her work has been shortlisted for the Bronwen Wallace Award, the CBC Literary Prizes and the Playboy College Fiction Contest, and has been published in the New Quarterly, SubTerrain and Best Canadian Short Stories. She is also the former fiction editor of PRISM International. You can find the animated trailer for her much-anticipated new novel, In Search of the Perfect Singing Flamingo, here or read or listen to an excerpt of the novel here.

Claire’s advice to aspiring writers:

“Writing is a career of attrition — a lot of people stop because of self doubt. There’s a sense that if you keep going you will improve … being kind to yourself might be the best advice.”

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