Award-winning Regina writer Trevor Herriot talks to Shelly Kawaja about his debut novel: The Economy of Sparrows (Thistledown Press, 2023)
Shelly Kawaja (SK): The Economy of Sparrows, is about Nell Rowan and her new life on the family farm she inherited, but it is also about her interest in birds and bird collectors, an interest that becomes a life-changing obsession. What inspired you to write so closely about birds?
Trevor Herriot (TH): Birds are a way for people to awaken to and connect with the more-than-human world and I include them in my writing to bring the reader into that kind of awareness. In The Economy of Sparrows, the stories about bird collectors like William Spreadborough are there to add some mystery and drama but also to bring out the themes around how science and natural history were conscripted into the colonial project.
SK: Nell is a solitary figure who spends her days farming and birdwatching, but her quiet endeavours lead her to others who share her interests and they form these really beautiful, delicate relationships that fit the precarity of the landscape they live in. There is a sense of harmony here, or at least, a striving toward harmony that feels hopeful. Would you call this book hopeful?
TH: Hope is too often a kind of commodity people imagine they might “get” somewhere, so while I wrote the novel in full awareness that we are living in a time when we are all in a sense starving for hope as we look at the future, engendering hope was not my intention. Rather, I wanted to encourage people who are feeling hopeless and tempted to give up, to provide a narrative that asks them to dig in and keep on trying to build a better world.
SK: This book overlays the economy of birds with the economy of farming and shows how they are at odds with each other. It suggests that human industry has a lot to learn from the patterns and behaviors of animals. Did this require a lot of research on your part, on both birds and farming?
TH: Research is the fun part, or the easy part. I am constantly reading about agro-ecology and regenerative agriculture, new trends in farming that might bring the economy of our food systems and the economy of nature more in line, by at least reducing the climate change and biodiversity footprint of how we grow and distribute food.
SK: This is your eighth book, but your first novel. How has the process of writing fiction been different from writing non-fiction?
TH: When I write non-fiction I begin with a broad concept or category usually and start collecting notes and research, ideas for possible avenues of inquiry, people to meet and interview or travel with. Then at some point, I take a look at it all and decide what to chuck and what to pursue. The novel started as a dual narrative structure that I had to eventually abandon, with much more intimate third-person material detailing William Spreadborough’s life. As I went through drafts and showed them to a few friends I could see that it was not working. That was when I decided to trim it down to the contemporary story of Nell Rowan and her life. Spreadborough’s story would have to be seen through her eyes and sparingly.
SK: Can you tell us a little about your process? How long did it take you to write The Economy of Sparrows? How did you know when it was finished?
TH: I started dreaming about a novel like this around 2010 and started writing it in earnest in 2017. So about six years. I still don’t know if it’s finished!
SK: What was the most satisfying aspect of writing this book?
TH: The most satisfying aspect of the whole journey was working with my editor, Fred Stenson. It was only after a couple of rounds of revising and adding new material at Fred’s prompting that I could see that the story was finally going to work. Fred was a thorough and unflinchingly honest editor. Exactly what I needed.
SK: What writing rituals or routines do you follow in where, when, or how you write?
TH: I like to write in the early morning, though walking in the afternoon is often helpful in sorting problems out that I am working on. I don’t write in an office and tend to sit elsewhere in the house or at our cabin in the country.
SK: What emotions do you associate with writing? Or, differently put, how does writing impact your emotional state? How do you talk to yourself when things are hard?
TH: Strangely, the first emotion that comes to mind is the dip in my mood that happens just after a book is published and I finish promoting it. Suddenly, there is a gap and I often try to fill it by building something—a deck, a backyard pond, a small guest cabin, a toolshed. But I would not say that I “enjoy” writing the way some may enjoy it. I enjoy having written.
SK: With eight books under your belt, what advice would you offer new writers just starting out?
TH: If you want to be a writer, first become a reader. Once you have found the kind of writing you like because you have read so much of it, do not be afraid to reverse engineer it and figure out how your favourite writers do the things that make you want to read what they write. It takes work but it is the best way to learn the craft.
SK: What’s next on the horizon for you? Will we see more fiction from Trevor Herriot?
TH: Anything is possible, but I am collecting material and notes for a non-fiction book that is still too indeterminate for me to describe to myself, let alone others.
About the Author
Trevor Herriot is a naturalist, grassland conservationist, and the author of several award-winning books, including Grass, Sky, Song and the national bestseller River in a Dry Land, both of which were short-listed for the Governor General’s Award for Non-fiction. Towards a Prairie Atonement, published in October 2016, took two Saskatchewan Book Awards.
Islands of Grass, a book of his essays accompanying the photographs of Branimir Gjetvaj, released in the fall of 2017, also won two Saskatchewan Book Awards and was shortlisted for a High Plains Book award.
He is a recipient of the Kloppenberg Award for Literary Merit and the Saskatchewan Order of Merit. His essays and articles have appeared in The Globe & Mail, The Narwhal, Brick, Border Crossings, Canadian Geographic, and several anthologies.
He and his wife, Karen, live in Regina, and spend much of their time on a piece of Aspen Parkland prairie east of the city. An Economy of Sparrows is his eighth book, but first novel.