Author Carleigh Baker.Callan Field
For this feature, Globe B.C. borrows from Marcel Proust (and other media who have popularized the French author's questionnaire), as a way to get to know important people around this province when they're not making headlines. Here is Carleigh Baker, Métis/Icelandic writer, whose debut short-story collection, Bad Endings, won the 2017 City of Vancouver Book Award and was a finalist for the prestigious Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.
1. What is your greatest fear?
The unknown. Even when there might be something good coming down the pipe, uncertainty is the worst.
2. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Insecurity.
3. What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Willful ignorance.
4. When and where were you happiest?
Anywhere, any time, as long as it's sunny.
5. What is your greatest extravagance?
Sparkling water, which might not sound very fancy, but I drink gallons of it.
6. What is the best present you've ever been given?
Divorce papers. On my birthday.
7. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?
An orca. The most bad-ass of whales.
8. What is the best line you've ever written?
Probably some tweet long forgotten.
9. If you could be a fictional character for one day, who would it be?
Nathan Explosion from Metalocalypse.
10. If you could live anywhere in Vancouver, where would it be?
Probably in one of those downtown apartments on like, the 30th floor, so I could constantly remind myself of my superiority to the unwashed masses.
11. What is the greatest issue facing Vancouver?
Housing.
12. Bike, walk or drive?
Walk. Much respect to the bikers. That looks terrifying.
13. If a time machine took you back to depute before Vancouver city council in 1975, what would you tell them?
That they're on the traditional, ancestral, unceded territory of the Musqueam, Tsleil Waututh and Squamish nations.
14. What is the best book you've read this year?
Non-fiction: The Reconciliation Manifesto by the late Arthur Manuel. Fiction: This Accident of Being Lost by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson.
15. Least favourite holiday?
It's not really a holiday, but I hate Halloween.
16. An object you still own from your childhood?
A stuffed velveteen bear named Hairbear. He's about 35 years old. He doesn't have a face any more, but faces are overrated.
17. What was your first paying job?
At a German bakery in Lillooet. I was 14. They paid me under the table.
18. Dog or cat?
Bunny. Dogs are too needy and cats are jerks.
19. If you had $1-million to give to a charity, what cause would you select?
I'm not sure I would pick a "charitable organization" necessarily, I'd talk to my community and elders about where they thought the money should go.
20. What life lesson have you learned this year?
Worrying about things I can't control is exhausting and pointless.
Marsha Lederman