#ThisorThatThursday with Don Sawyer

I’d like to welcome Don Sawyer back to the blog for #ThisorThatThursday!

Favorite thing to do when you have free time: Travel

The thing you’ll always move to the bottom of your to do list: Anything financial

Things you need when you’re in your writing cave: Wife

Things that distract you from writing: Wife

Hardest thing about being a writer: discipline to attack the blank screen/page

Easiest thing about being a writer: joy of watching the words unfurl nicely almost independent of me

Things you will run to the store for at midnight: Haagen Dazs ice cream bar for my wife

Things you never put on your shopping list: calves’ liver

The coolest thing you’ve bought online: solar-powered light and fan for friends in Cuba

The thing you wished you’d never bought. 1971 Renault 12

Favorite snacks: mixed nuts with no peanuts

Things that make you want to gag: cruelty and bigotry

Something you’re really good at: speaking

Something you’re really bad at: knowing when to speak and when not to

Something you wanted to be when you were a kid: funny; I don’t recall any particular professional or personal aspiration

Something you do that you never dreamed you’d do: podcasts

Something you wish you could do: speak Spanish

Something you wish you’d never learned to do: become convinced that I can’t learn to speak Spanish

Favorite places you’ve been: Bilbao, Languedoc, The Gambia, Jamaica, Cuba

Places you never want to go to again: Florida

People you’d like to invite to dinner (living): George Monbiot, Bernie Sanders, Barbara Kingsolver, Jose (Pepe) Mujica

People you’d cancel dinner on: Anyone associated with the current American administration

Favorite things to do: have a few pints with good friends in a classic London pub (with no TVs)

Things you’d run through a fire or eat bugs to get out of doing: I’ve eaten bugs; they’re the tenderest when they’re in the larval stage.

Best thing you’ve ever done: Marry my wife and have two terrific daughters

Biggest mistake: develop Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Most daring thing you’ve ever done: Heading out to the University of British Columbia in a 2-cycle SAAB in 1969 ties with deciding to have kids

Something you chickened out from doing: Not much

The coolest person you’ve ever met: Thich Nhat Hanh

The celebrity who didn’t look like he/she did in pictures/video: author Pat Conroy

The nicest thing a reader said to you: “I would like to acknowledge how much I really enjoyed your novel Where the Rivers Meet. This novel was the only book I’ve ever read and actually finished.”

The craziest thing a reader said to you: (from a rejection letter for Where the Rivers Meet, set in a predominantly aboriginal high school): “The characters talk in too adult a manner and insights are too well articulated.” The book went on to sell 20,000 copies, mostly to First Nations’ schools.

The most exciting thing about your writing life: Realizing I could affect personal and social change through my writing; being invited, along with my wife, to speak to 600 Education students at Lakehead University who were reading Tomorrow Is School. Writer as rock star.

The one thing you wish you could do over in your writing life: My writing life has always been secondary to my lived life; I feel enormously fortunate to have been able to have to have combined the two.

About Don:

An educator and writer, Don grew up in Michigan and came to Canada in the 1960s, where I more or less flunked out of a PhD program in Modern Chinese History. This turned out to be a blessing as it opened up a world of opportunity and experiences I never contemplated. From teaching in a small Newfoundland outport to training community workers in West Africa to teaching adults on a First Nations reserve in British Columbia to designing a climate change action course for Jamaican youth, I have worked with youth and adults from many cultural backgrounds and in a variety of locales.

Inevitably, these experiences have made their way into my writing. I have authored over 12 books, including two Canadian bestsellers: the YA novel Where the Rivers Meet (Pemmican) and the adult non-fiction Tomorrow Is School and I Am Sick to the Heart Thinking about It (Douglas and McIntyre). The first book in his Miss Flint series for children, The Meanest Teacher in the World (Thistledown) was translated into German by Carlsen (hardback) and Ravensburger. My articles and op-eds have appeared in many journals and most of Canada’s major dailies.