Presented by Lyn Koltutsky to the Calgary Women’s Literary Club,
April 10, 2018
By Emily Carr – https://www.aci-iac.ca/art-books/emily-carr/credits, Public Domain, Link
“Writing is a strong easement for perplexity. My whole life is spread out like a map with all the rivers and hills showing.”
Emily Carr
Emily Carr (1871-1945) recorded that reflection in her journal in the last decade of her long and productive creative life. Though her paintings have received the most attention, Carr was also a prolific and successful writer.
In 1937, Carr suffered her first heart attack, which marked the beginning of a decline in her health and a lessening of the energy required for painting. She began to devote more time to writing, an activity she had commenced many years before with the encouragement of Ira Dilworth, an educator and CBC executive. She produced seven books. Her first, Klee Wyck, is a collection of short stories, won the Governor General’s Award for Literature in l941.
1942 The Book of Small is published.
1944 The House of All Sorts is published.
The following books were published posthumously:
Growing Pains: An Autobiography (1946), The Heart of a Peacock (1953), Pause (1953), Hundred and Thousands: The Journals of an Artist, November 1927-March 1941 (1966).
“Writing is a splendid sorter of… feelings, better even than paint.”
Emily Carr