The art of Flirt

Jackson’s bio

Before teaching creative writing at UVic, Jackson spent a decade as a country singer in bars around B.C.

Jackson’s writing has appeared in such publications as Quill and Quire magazine, Georgia Straight, the Malahat Review and Brick.

Interviewing the interviewer: Chatting with writer Lorna Jackson about Canadian icons

The irony is even apparent in interviewing Lorna Jackson about her book of faux interviews with some Canadian icons. Flirt: The Interviews, which hit shelves last month, is a collection of fictionalized interviews with such names as Janet Gretzky, Alice Munro, Bobby Orr and country rock singer Ian Tyson.

“I actually started out with Tyson,” said Jackson, an assistant professor at the University of Victoria’s Department of Writing. “I had this fascination, I was wondering why so many musicians and writers admired him and were obsessed with him. And I didn’t want to do just a straight-ahead profile piece, so I kind of decided to form it into a fictional interview.”

From there Jackson decided to flesh out more interviews, around the same time she was putting the finishing touches on Cold-Cocked, a non-fiction book about her days following the Vancouver Canucks during two back-to-back seasons.

With Flirt, Jackson said she wanted to poke fun at a lot of things, including narcissism and the act of interviewing.

“In the end we all really just want to talk about ourselves don’t we?” she added.

Hockey also features heavily in the book including chats with Bobby Orr, Canucks captain Markus Naslund and Wayne Gretzky’s wife Janet. Jackson has tackled hockey from a women’s perspective before and felt no qualms about prodding our national pastime a bit.

“I don’t really struggle with it, it’s kind of my job,” said Jackson. “With Cold-Cocked that was one of the most important creative points of it was sort of looking at hockey as this religious sport. Which is the dominate narrative written about it, and taking a different perspective on it.

“And I guess when you write about anything that’s taken so serious you’re going to run into opposition but so far the response for Cold-Cocked and Flirt has been positive.”

The collection also features an unknown protagonist who enjoys talking about herself as much as asking famous people questions. Any interviewer gets jitters before chatting with someone super famous or an artist they admire, and Jackson said she’s no exception to the rule.

“I remember I was going to interview (Canadian poet) Robert Ford. And I was getting so nervous sitting waiting for his call that when he did phone all I ended up blabbing about myself right away. And he’s a great interview so naturally what you want to do is just have a conversation with that person, not simply a Q and A.”

Jackson, whose currently working on another novel and a batch of short stories, said she isn’t expecting any nasty phone calls from the Canadian icons she wrote about in Flirt.

“Some of my friends are worried, not me. And I think I gave all of the characters justice and their due.

“With Janet she ends up being a very heroic and helpful creature in the end, helping out the interviewer who is basically falling apart herself. And it’s kind of worlds away from the person who posed almost nude on the cover of Playboy.”

patrickb@vicnews.com