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Kim Van Bruggen's avatar

Mary, you made me cry. There's a both/and here. Good/bad. You've taken my breath away for a couple of reasons.

First, I just wrote about getting reacquainted with Alice Munro after 40 years. After first reading her at UVic and not understanding her at all. The link is here if you get a moment to read it: https://kimvanbruggen.substack.com/p/on-seeing-shades-of-grey-unlocking

Second, because your post just brought me back to my 18-year-old self sitting in my very first class as a creative writing major at UVic. Full of hope and excitement. We were waiting for the professor to arrive. It was our first class with him. We were sitting with our backs to the doors, there were two. The quiet was shattered by a startling and unexpected slam of a door. We all turned towards the sound. No one was there. Then our heads spun like tops as a man entered the room by the opposite door. Yelling. I sat stunned as he proceeded to dress us down for the rest of the class and hurl all kinds of insults at us. The man was, yes, Lawrence Russell.

I promptly left the class and went to the registrar's office where I transferred out of the Creative Writing program and switched into English as my major.

Over this past year of writing on Substack I have often thought of what might have been. What if my first encounter hadn't been with that professor? What if I had stayed in the Creative Writing program at UVic? Would I be the writer I had so wanted to be back then? Would the writing I've always wanted to do come to me earlier, instead of 40 years later?

The fact that he stopped Alice Munro in her tracks for over a year made my heart squeeze in my chest. It's a name I had worked hard to forget, and yet the moment I saw it on your page, it all came leaping back to me. How many other writers have we almost lost because of a man like that?

This memory is painful, but your post about Alice is beautiful. Thanks for sharing your tribute to Alice Munro. I'm enjoying re-discovering her and look forward to reading many more of her stories with the nuance I can better understand.

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Veronika Bond's avatar

Thank you so much for this heartfelt tribute. And for your lens on Alice Munro's work. I haven't read any of her writing (yet). Now I will! Thank you for the amazing trailer too ...

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