Award-winning author and Powell River resident Charlotte Gill recently completed a four-month term as writer-in-residence for the Campbell River Museum’s Haig-Brown Heritage House.
From the beginning of December to the middle of April, Gill spent her weekdays divided between working on her own projects and engaging with the community. She spoke to groups of museum visitors, taught writing workshops and gave one-on-one help to local writers working on their own manuscripts.
“It was a very busy time,” said Gill, “and a great experience.”
She attempted to come home on the weekends when the ferries were not cancelled due to inclement weather.
The 1923 heritage farmhouse where she stayed in Campbell River was home to Roderick Haig-Brown, a naturalist and writer, and his family. The home was sold to the city after Haig-Brown’s death and was taken over by the museum.
While not all of the writers-in-residence at the Haig-Brown house have been from BC, the one thing they all have in common is a love for natural history. Gill has this in spades.
She wrote her 2012 bestselling memoir Eating Dirt: Deep Forests, Big Timber and Life with the Tree-planting Tribe about her experiences planting roughly a million trees over her 17 years working in collision zones between humans and trees, also known as clear-cuts.
“As tree planters we’re tiny individuals in this really vast canvas,” she said. “We’re part of the story, but only minimally.”
The book chronicled her life for a season in the bush and gave her the opportunity to explore the broader issues of forest ecology and logging.
It won various awards including the BC National Award for Non-Fiction, A Quill & Quire Non-Fiction Book of the Year and iTunes Non-Fiction Book of the Year, and was short-listed for the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction and the 2011 Hilary Weston Writers Trust Award.
Since moving to Powell River about two and a half years ago with her husband Kevin, one of the more surprising aspects of Gill’s life is how often she travels for work. Over the last year she estimates that she spent 150 days away from home.
“It’s a freelance life,” she said. “You never really know how much time you’re going to spend away from home until it happens.”
In addition to promoting her books, Gill teaches creative writing and narrative non-fiction in the University of British Columbia’s Masters of Fine Arts program and she leads writing workshops at The Banff Centre.
“I was coming and going a lot,” she said. “I have this giant collection of hotel soap and shampoo in my bathroom.”
Despite her busy schedule she relishes the time she spends at home. Since returning from her stay in Campbell River, she and her husband have spent considerable time in their Townsite home garden, though she admits to having something of “a brown thumb.”
Gill, who started out as a short fiction writer, is currently in the middle of figuring out her next book and is planning to write a novel.
