Halls Island Residency

Imagine having an island all to yourself for a week with no meetings, no interruptions, no responsibilities other than keeping yourself alive and working on your current work in progress. While it seems like a lovely daydream, it’s also entirely obtainable because of the good folks at Halls Island Artist Residency.

I had the great privilege in June to hole up on Hall’s Island and work on my current novel Understory. Thank you to the Ontario Arts Council for their continued support with this project. This allowed me the flexibility to attend this residency.

Outside writing area and one of the bunkies.

Halls Island is located in central Ontario, in Haliburton Hills area a few hour north of Toronto. It was about a five hour drive for me, but I understand other attendees later in the summer would be travelling from much further afield.

The residency began with a short boat ride across Koshlong lake on a pontoon laden with my myriad belongings. Ed the ferryman, a lovely gent in a feud with the very boat he captained, very kindly helped me with my encumbrances and gave me the low down of my temporary home, showing me the facilities, the solar and water set ups, any emergency procedures. Then he left me to get settled, cursing the boat as he sailed off into the distance.

Halls caters to a variety of artists. I attended on my own, but the island has also hosted co-artists and small music groups before. There’s a primary cabin with sleeping quarters, as well as outbuilding bunkies available. As suggested by Ed, I chose the bunkie up the hill with the writing desk and the gorgeous views of the lake.

Somehow they made mosquito netting look rather romantic!

Halls hosted multiple residencies throughout the summer and I believed mine was the first or the second of the year, in mid-June. When I found out I had been offered a residency spot I was overjoyed, but I cursed myself when I found out what week I’d been allotted. The main reason was that it overlapped with the residency I would be attending in Winnipeg at the end of the month. When I applied I had no idea when, or if, I’d be attending either. The Halls Island council was kindly accommodating and worked with me to find a solution for this. I only ended up on the island for eight days, while a standard stay was ten, but it at least allowed me to attend both residencies.

The second reason was that, as an Ontarian, I know how unpredictable June weather can be in this part of the world. And June didn’t disappoint, with the first three nights of my stay going down to about 5 degrees celsius, then shooting up over thirty degrees for one of the worst heat waves we’ve had in years. Days were in the 40s (about 105 fahrenheit) , with nights still around 21 degrees. Needless to say, I went for several dips in the lake throughout the day and sat around in wet clothes so I didn’t overheat. I will admit, I didn’t get as much writing done during that period as I had planned, but I still made some progress.

Most days on the island started with me waking up around 7:30/8, making myself an oat latte using the French press and then writing for an hour or so. On the hot days, I took a dip after that before I had breakfast. After that, I’d do a little walk around the island (which took less than five minutes) before I got back to writing or reading. If it was hot, I enjoyed afternoon naps with the fan blasting on my wet clothes. On the last hot day, there was a gorgeous thunderstorm. The gales bent the trees and when the lightning hit close to the island the thunder rattled the cottage.

Clip of rainstorm from the window of the cabin up the hill. It’s so foggy you can barely see the islands across the bay

In the evenings I swam and listened to forest horror audiobooks as I cooked my dinners, some of which were more successful than others. You must bring all the food you need for your stay with you and best to bring anything else you need to cook as well (spices and oil/vinegar). They do have a pantry of bits and bobs folk have left, but the stock is a mystery until you arrive.

I barbecued for the first time in my life: salmon, corn and sweet potatoes. One warm dinner; one cold leftovers. Hindsight: I shouldn’t have foiled up the po-tay-toes but they were still ok, if a bit damp.

One of the reasons I wanted to attend this residency was because I thought the immersion and isolation would help me with the vibe of my novel, which is a forest horror book. Alas, the island was too lovely to evoke that kind of atmosphere, except at night when I had to run down the hill to the outhouse. That was definitely the spookiest part of being there alone. Even though they promised there was no wildlife, I kept expecting to run into a bear en route to the compost toilet. Being from northern Ontario where we often have bears just walking down the road, it was eerie to only have chipmunks, spiders and mosquitoes in residence with me.

While the night trips were always a little unnerving, they were also sort of magical because of the solar lights that illuminated the path from the cabin down to the John.

Dwell, linger, stay: messages from Halls. the writing nook where I worked

I wish I’d taken more photos. As ever, I'm someone who prefers to experience the moment unmediated. The main cabin was where I cooked, ate my meals, and hid from the sun. There were resources and relics from attendees past which I would’ve liked to document.

On the final day, the pontoon came back for me with a new captain and crew. The first people (and dog!) I’d seen in a week. As we chugged back to the mainland, I realised I was happy to be venturing back into semblance of civilisation. Even for introverts, it can be a challenge being by yourself for a long, uninterrupted period of time. But it didn’t take long to get my fill of hustle and bustle before I was longing for the focused simplicity of the island.


Writers' Reserve Grant

Thank you to the Ontario Arts Council for their support through their Writers’ Reserve grant program for my new novel project “Understory”. Thanks especially to recommenders Latitude 46 Publishing and Cormorant Books.

Wordstock Sudbury

On November 6 2021, Kayt Burgess will be in conversation with writer David Giuliano and moderator Bennet Malcolmson at Wordstock Literary Festival in Sudbury Ontario. They will speak about Connection at Newcombe and writing about Northern Ontario.

For more information visit the Wordstock Festival site.

Connection at Newcombe out April 24th 2021

Connection at Newcombe is out tomorrow (April 24th). This novel was meant to be out last autumn, but due to the pandemic the launch was shifted to this spring.

There won’t be a traditional launch party, as that is unfeasible in the current climate. But there will be a surprise on May 6th. More details forthcoming.

Here’s an early review from The Miramichi Reader

Places to purchase the novel: 

Latitude 46: http://latitude46publishing.com/

 Indigo.ca : https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/connection-at-newcombe/9781988989266-item.html?ikwid=connection+at+newcombe&ikwsec=Home&ikwidx=0#algoliaQueryId=06219ec479f6a44d10f04e8f9236fa83

The book is available via amazon for international readers.

Journey to Svalbard

I think for many readers, when they hear Svalbard, they think of Philip Pullman’s seminal His Dark Materials trilogy. In the first book, the heroine Lyra Belacqua journeys to the arctic to rescue her friend and the other children that have been stolen by the gobblers. Pullman’s fictional version of Svalbard is particularly notable as this is where the panserbjørne kingdom is located.

In our real world version of Svalbard, there are no panserbjørne, but there are polar bears of the non-armoured variety, and thus humans must stay within city limits unless they are armed. Despite having never seen a polar bear, this makes the stark, alien landscape of Longyearbyen feel more homey to me, as curious bears can regularly be found trotting down northern ontario streets as well, particularly on garbage day.

Today I leave on an arctic sailing expedition where I will be gathering assets and beginning the creation of two projects: one, an augmented reality app that depicts the intimate, digitally-mediated relationship between the reader and a traveller in a near future where technology is constantly disrupted by climate change. This project investigates some of the burgeoning grammars of AR, particularly those that use temporality and communication disruption for emotional impact. The second project is a lyrical virtual reality project exploring elemental winter and the multimodal elements used to depict and define ‘cold’.

I am so pleased to have been selected for this residency, and to be travelling with a phenomenal group of artists, researchers, arctic guides and sailors. I will be incommunicado for the next few weeks, but will return to civilization in late October with steady sea legs and hard drives full of digital materials.

-K

Digital Conversations at the British Library

On July 2018, I had the honour of speaking about The VESSEL Project at the New Media Writing Prize 10th Anniversary talk at The British Library in London. I was privileged to share the stage with new media writing luminaries Andy Campbell (Dreaming Methods), inaugural NMWP winner Christine Wilks, and 2018 NMWP winner Amira Hanafi.

Andy gave us an historical overview of the prize and a glimpse into his ground-breaking work in VR narratives, while Christine introduced the audience her award-winning flash Underbelly and talked about how her practice has changed since. Amira unpacked the creative process behind her powerful bi-lingual piece of e-lit: A Dictionary of the Revolution. Finally, I spoke about The VESSEL Project and the ways augmented reality and new media writing can help community renewal by introducing geographic counter-stories to combat toxic community narratives.

Organiser Dr. Jim Pope chaired the rountable and if:book UK director Dr. Chris Meade spoke about the Dot Award and joined us to discuss the history and future of digital and new media writing.

Thank you to Stella Wisdom and the British Library for organising the event and Bournemouth University and If:Book for ten years of celebration and support for new media storytelling!

To read more about the event, visit the NMWP coverage at the NMWP website or check out their twitter.

Website Re-Launch

I am happy to announce the re-launch of my website. I allowed my last website to languish without updates for rather a long time. I will try to be better about keeping this one up to date!

This website uses the squarespace template Avenue. The splash image is a graphic I designed several years ago for a now defunct flash website. It collects symbols from a variety of communication systems, including the quadrivium, alchemy, as well as more modern icons and glyphs.

Save those from my own library and the event images, all photographs have been taken from Unsplash. The title header / logo employs the font walker by Margo + Co.