Local Writers Interview With: Nicole Mae
What is your story?
So, I'm a writer and filmmaker from Treaty 4 Canada here. I grew up in the north basically in the middle of a forest but art was definitely a big part of my world. I was always painting at a really young age and had this turquoise cheap digital camera that I recorded everything with and did the weirdest montages. I would write short stories about my friends and give them to them so I grew up doing all that kind of stuff and it was really a foundation for my current creative career. I have two published poetry books now and I'm working on releasing my third. I do poetry on Skill share and I do host those workshops. Then like I said I do film work too so I've had a few of my short films in art galleries around North America and CBC News and Globe Theatre have commissioned me to do some independent pieces. So, I have a lot of fun with it. The core of my creative expressions is storytelling. I really love narrative art. It kind of always comes back to nostalgia, longing and identity. I would say those are the three themes I work the most with.
What books do you remember reading when you were growing up, how do they influence you today?
This is a fun question because I hated reading, I did not read when I was a kid. Which usually takes people by surprise but if a book didn't have pictures in it like I could not pay attention. I do think that influenced me in itself because I was such a vivid and imaginative kid when I came into reading and writing I already had this sense of world building and my greatest initial challenge was to take what is already in my mind and put it into words and that challenge in itself is really what allowed me to dive head first into writing. So, it's possible that you know if I didn't grow up with reading and writing as long as I did maybe this whole process would be a bit more slow-burn but it wasn't as soon as I kind of discovered this love and this interest where I was dissecting dictionaries and reading the most obscure books.
So, you're so visual and that is where a lot of your art and filmmaking comes in and then the writing which is instantaneous because you know you didn’t have that background growing up so it was all at once kind of fell in love?
Yeah, because I started in Fine Arts, that was even my first job, I was making wall murals for different people and doing sketches like when I was maybe 10-11. I was really visual and I think filmmaking was the transition period between writing and visual art for me because it's kind of a blend of both. You do need a lot of scripting, you need a lot of storytelling in it. A painting is one singular moment of the whole story and I see films, especially short films which is what I specialize in, expanding upon that moment a bit more right going into characters going into scene setting and a story is the entire world around it. So, I think all three of them just intertwined really well in my brain. It works out for whatever sort of project I get inspired to do.
How does your upbringing influence your writing?
I think in terms of environmentally where I was living it did make me quite a creative person because I lived in the middle of nowhere. We had maybe three television channels and none of them were kids channels. So, I also have a very big gap of knowledge of like kids shows that everyone can be nostalgic about and I have no clue what they're talking about. I was genuinely just like a kid in trees, and around animals, all that kind of stuff but I do think the lack of connection to those kinds of things really let my imagination go wild so definitely contributed in that way in a positive way. Then in the reverse though like all the more negative sides I did have a bit of a tumultuous upbringing. I think it does give this sense of and for all age groups and all kinds of people, authenticity because I think I have quite a variety of experiences and perspectives that I had to go through at a very young age. I do value that, because I mean art usually comes from not just an inspiring place but some painful plays, so definitely like a mix of those things environmentally it was really good to curate my creative expression and then at the same time a lot of the sadder content comes from the people I knew and grew up around.
How is your heritage important to you, does it influence your writing?
I would say so, I feel like I have a complicated relationship with my heritage. I think less specific to Saskatchewan because it's kind of just neutral throughout everyone here right but I'm a second generation Hungarian, so I'm still kind of trying to reconcile with what that means to my identity. I grew up with the language and the food and the people but Hungary as a country isn't the most progressive they've a lot of issues around women's rights and queer rights and I've often felt like my own heritage doesn't like who I am. So, I rejected it for a lot of my life but kind of came into this maybe hunger to still connect with it and in the process of trying to figure out where I fit in with all this, I did make a short film with my mom actually. It was quite fun. It's called ‘A Game Called Ajakrúza’ and that means lipstick in Hungarian. I created a fictional world but got her to help narrate it and speak Magyar which is the language and that was actually quite a healing thing for me to create from that sort of place connected to my heritage. But almost singularly to me and my mom and not the country itself or anything nationalistic. So, it does play a part but I think it's been more recently been playing a part so kind of playing around with poems related to it. I'm still in that kind of learning phase of how much do I want to weigh my Hungarian heritage, identity to me as a person and my expressions but I've been playing around with it.
Did you value having the language and the food when you were young?
I don't think so mostly because I was quite lost in all I didn't know I was speaking Hungarian, and I didn't know I was eating Hungarian food until I got to school and then that's when I realized. You know there were certain words I would say that there's no English equivalent to so I'd just kind of say those words in a sentence and nobody would know what I was talking about. I felt lied to and I would go home and say this isn’t English?! I just grew up with an amalgamation of both languages so that was confusing to me it also made me feel angry as maybe 5–6-year-old. I would address my parents and my grandparents with Hungarian equivalents to mom dad grandma stuff like that and then like I said there's some words that you have to describe a whole sentence in English that means one singular word in Hungarian. So, we would just use those Hungarian words. So, there was definitely a lot of judgment early on going into school people not really understanding, and so I don't know I don't think I really appreciated it. Then as a kid we ate a lot of Hungarian food, lots of pierogies, lots of cabbages and I just simply didn't like it that much. There are all these little things I definitely felt disconnected from that I’ve kind of come back to as an adult and have learnt to appreciate it, but you know when you're a bit younger minded it’s a bit more black and white.
Why do you write/ How do you want your writing to affect people?
Personally, I just want people to feel something profound. I've always said that if someone reads my work, sets it down, shrugs, and doesn't think about it again that I didn’t do my job right. I think you know a way to kind of more easily describe it is a couple of years ago I was going through this extreme heartbreak just so emotional to the point I was getting physically ill, very upset. I was crying to my mom on the phone and she was really encouraging me to say what I really wanted to say and she said to me the only thing we truly owe in this world is our emotions you can’t experience an incorrect emotion and I think that really attests to why I write and what the mission of writing is for me. I think what we feel is so important to us but I think it's really important that we look at it and really sit in it. Some of the most meaningful interactions I've had with people who’ve read my works that are just strangers have been people that have said my book has pulled them out of suicidal thoughts or it's encouraged them to take on writing or go to therapy or say something very bold to their parents. You know all of these kinds of things are so vivid even though they've happened throughout the last 6-7 years I can remember them so clearly because they mattered so much to me. So, that's definitely like not necessarily how I got started but it was kind of what became of it. Specifically with poetry it sometimes talks so accurately to someone’s emotions and it relates to us so that's kind of the path it’s taken. My first book was written a lot from first experiences. I would say like really coming into myself as a young person and that's why it's called Youth. Screaming Sweet Nothings does center around quite a bad relationship with other things here in their family issues and living situations but my second book was definitely for me a source of therapy. I was writing it from a very bad place in my life but it kind of turned into this whole thing where other people have been able to tell me their own stories through it which has been amazing and never thought that’s what would happen necessarily. The third book, which will hopefully be coming out soon, is also coming from a different place so I don't know. I think it's kind of ever changing. It has been such a strange feeling but a good strange with Screaming Sweet Nothings because it's I think 4-5 years old at this point so I kind of look back at it was like oh I feel so bad for the me who wrote that book because I don't feel like I'm in that place anymore, thankfully. Good things have happened since then and at the same time that it holds such a similar weight to people in the same experiences even if it is this many years later, it's been interesting. I'm feeling very reflective about it but it's nice.
What authors influenced you the most and why?
I think that I was younger not as much just because I was kind of just reading one-off books, my consumption of literature was so sporadic and random I didn't follow one consistent person. Whereas as an adult that's not the case at all I feel as though when I read someone I really like I read all of their work. Right now, my favorite authors are Ocean Vuong and Bell Hooks, so Ocean Vuong writes a lot about his queer experience and immigration which are similar things that I relate to for sure. But his writing in general is just so elegant, the first time I ever read one of his works I was blown away that a person could write like that. I’ve watched so many interviews as well. He has like 45 minute interviews that I’ve watched and he speaks the same way he writes, and I really admire that he's super skilled. Then Bell Hooks, she passed away December 2022 but she was a prof as well as a non-fiction writer who wrote a lot of feminism race class. She's such a strikingly influential writer, her most notable work is All About Love but there's like countless stories online where you can read about people who read her work and it completely changed their lives. I remember coming across an article where someone in jail read one of her books and created an entire program to help educate the men on feminism just because of one book she wrote. She's amazing and I know she's really influenced my own writing. I've underlined all of her books and dog tailed them and everything so yeah both of those people right now are definitely my favorite writers.
What is the most important part of your creative process?
For me it's just not being busy, like I feel as though I can write or create things from any sort of environment, time or date, I don't find it difficult to just sit down and do something but I feel as though my best works come from when I actually allocate special time to write or film. Essentially just entering a little hermit space in my aloneness, completely cut off from the world. Maybe that's a little bit of a reflection of how I grew up being like that, who knows but yeah, I think that's been a very important part of my creative process is really like un-busying myself.
Do you think the balance of being both busy and then unbusying is important?
For sure yeah because I do feel inspired by everything really. I can be at my job and just overhear someone's conversation or see something strange out the window and I’ll just jot it down. But I can go into it a bit more in depth once I'm left alone and able to have a bit more mindful quietness.
What does authenticity mean to you in the context of community?
The way I was kind of thinking of this question is as a whole community when someone comes to you exactly as they are right, and they say ‘This is who I am, this is my work what do you think?’, you do your best to understand it and uplift it. I think one of the most beautiful things about the concept of a community is all different walks of life being able to coexist and inhabit space. So, I think nurturing that really breeds authenticity. So, I would say when someone is presenting themselves and their work whether you get it or not you go if you think you know what you're doing let's see it right. I think everyone kind of interacting like that, treating each other like that is the way to get there.
Do you think building a connection between the writers of Saskatchewan’s past and present writers is helpful to build the writer community?
I do think that, I feel like it's such a nuanced thing and I can attest better to poetry specifically but there is kind of this the separation between both groups right now. I think the older poets of Saskatchewan write more scenic landscape poetry as well as a bit of tongue-in-cheek kind of nationalistic ideology-based poetry. Whereas younger poets write a bit more brutally and viciously oftentimes it’s a reflection of the social-political climate we live in as well as reflections on childhood and trauma and those are both very different concepts, poetry has just changed a lot. I'd love to see an appreciation for both kinds of poetry and people. I think there are some, not always, there are some disconnects, it's kind of that the more the merry phrase, the more people that can appreciate these differences the more interesting it will get for sure. Genre blending too is a very interesting aspect of literature that definitely goes unappreciated at times. Writers have never come from a place of sticking to a cookie cutter format that's not how they emerged originally it was a lot of revolutions against whatever was going on in the world and even though it's not that extreme it can still kind of go back to this how do we change what we're doing right now? I think in those areas of separation there is room for that, the coming of both styles.
How would you describe Saskatchewan’s or Regina’s writing community?
I do actually think it’s generally abundant. The writing community itself just as a concept is going to be smaller no matter where you go in the world it will never be the dominating job force. So, I think for how small Saskatchewan cities are compared to others, it is quite easy to grab hold of a lot of opportunities here. There is a Sask Writers Guild, who has a membership-based program but also there's a lot of free events that go on. There's local bookstores that often put on signings and host writers to speak, like McNally Robinson in Saskatoon and the Penny University bookstore in Regina. Word Up does poetry events all the time, so there's a lot of things but it does take a little bit of research. I feel they're not always obvious. However, there's a lot of events around and although writing is seen as a more introverted hobby I do feel as though writers love talking to other writers. A lot of it can come down to just talking to people, finding those events, asking questions making it quite easy to make those connections. I was unaware of a lot of this stuff Saskatchewan had to offer especially when I first moved to the city, but then just Googling some stuff I was like oh wow there's actually a bit more. Or if you do support local and you're often in local shops there's always posters for independent events and that's always helpful. That was something I realized like three years ago is a big part of at least Regina’s advertisement posters in local shops.
Do you touch on similar imagery in your poetry as you do in your photography/film making?
It depends for sure, sometimes I think unconsciously they're quite connected I guess like everything is coming from my brain. So, those themes I was talking about with nostalgia, longing, and identity I think do run threads whether its visual or literary projects. I do like intertwining them a lot. My books are quite visual and it wasn't photos that came first, it was the words but the search of finding what I'd like to put in them is always fun. If they’re self-curated you know I can base that off whatever I've written in the case of Screaming Sweet Nothings, I went through way too many photo albums of my parents and kind of used them as these narrative characters throughout the book. But yeah, they both go hand in hand. I don't find it too difficult to find the connections, and it’s not always intentional.
What is one piece of advice you’d give to aspiring poets/writers?
My advice would be as you're working on your writing craft, also work on trusting yourself. I would say one of the biggest hindrances to creative people is overthinking and overcomplicating your craft. A lot of the time we can get really stuck in self-doubt and so if an idea comes to you, you have to trust that it's there for a reason. If there’s a certain direction you want to take despite other people's opinions, you have to trust that there's a reason you want to take that direction. If you feel like somethings off it might be off so I would say developing that internal trust in your writing career or writing hobby is quite important.
