Author Karen Smythe on the evolution of her writing

Karen Smythe earned her PhD in English at the University of Toronto, focusing on the fiction of Mavis Gallant and Alice Munro; her book, Figuring Grief: Gallant, Munro, and the Poetics of Elegy was published in by McGill-Queen’s University Press. A Town with No Noise is Karen’s second novel, published in spring 2025 by Palimpsest Press. Karen was fiction editor for The Wascana Review and the Pottersfield Portfolio, and she guest edited the Michael Ondaatje issue of Essays on Canadian Writing. Her story collection, Stubborn Bones, was published in 2001, and her first novel, This Side of Sad, was published in 2017 by Goose Lane Editions. Here is author Karen Smythe on the evolution of her writing, her favourites writers, and how mother and daughter relationships feature in her writing.

Author Karen Smythe on the evolution of her writing

Author Karen Smythe

OCW: Has your writing evolved over the years? If so, how?

KS: Oh my yes. When I began writing short stories, I was an assistant professor of Canadian Literature, and my creative skills were a tad rusty.

I immersed myself in reading every short story I could get my hands on, especially New Yorker pieces and American Best Short Stories anthologies, which directed me to a huge number of literary journals. After publishing my first collection in 2001, I became focused on my administrative career and stopped writing until my retirement. When I decided to write a novel, I read as much contemporary fiction as I could; I also enrolled in Humber College’s School of Writing’s postgraduate certificate program, and I worked with Diane Schoemperlen to finish and refine my first novel. 

OCW: Can you trace any common themes across your writing?

KS: When I first began to publish stories, a friend told me she noticed a lot of emphasis on relationships between mother and daughters in my work. I hadn’t thought of that while writing them, but I could see her point.

My first novel did not have a mother as a major character, but my second novel—A Town with No Noise—certainly does; as a matter of fact it has an important grandmother character, as well. So the impact of one generation on the next has indeed become a focus again, and my third novel, not yet published, is very much about mothers and daughters, as well as mothering of siblings and friends. 

OCW: Which authors and/or types of books do you like to read? 

Favourite short story writers and novelist

KS: I will always love reading the short stories of Mavis Gallant and Alice Munro and the novels of Virginia Woolf. My current reading tastes have shifted to novels in translation—Natalia Ginzburg, Clarice Lispector, Dorthe Nors, Jenny Erpenbeck, and Tove Ditlensen, to name a few.

Social media: A mixed blessing

OCW: Do you use social media to engage readers, writers, or publishers and, if so, which platforms?

KS: As an older writer (I’m in my 60s), I am not as active on social media as younger generations are, for which I’m both grateful (it takes so much time and removes one from being in the moment, per se) and sorry (using social media for reaching readers and influences can be very advantageous). I am actively part of the literary community that still uses Facebook, and I used to use Twitter but cannot do so any longer, i.e. the current owner, so I need to replace that with Bluesky Social. I do have an account there, and one on Instagram, but I am not very good at those yet.

An inner critic functioning as an editor

10. Do you edit as you write, or write and edit later?

KS: Both! I have a very loud inner critic who edits as I write. I don’t use an outline for my novels, either—I have some characters and conflicts/events in mind, but they evolve as I write, as does the structure.

With my first novel I wrote traditional chapters, then cut the pages into separate paragraphs that I organized and put onto bulletin boards by theme—letting the story find its own flow that was not chronological. Each book is different, though, and that is part of the fun—and the challenge.