Welcome to The Interruption, a 49th Shelf–Books on the Radio collaboration in which I interview Canadian writers about the surprising things that inform, inspire, and even interrupt their creative process.

Today, I chat with Nancy Lee, author of the new novel, The Age. Of The Age, Annabel Lyon says:

"Nancy Lee has created a world of contradictions for our times: thoughtful terrorists, naive cynics, children as parents, girls who dream as boys. In sharply poetic prose, she delineates a world of gorgeous horrors and eerie loves.”

Nancy Lee lived her early years in England before immigrating to Canada. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. She has taught at the Simon Fraser University Writing and Publishing Program, and is the former Associate Director of the Booming Ground Writers Community.

Lee’s first book of fiction, Dead Girls, was named Book of the Year by NOW Magazine, and was a finalist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and the Danuta Gleed Literary Award. Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, as well as in the 2001 Toronto Life Summer Fiction issue. She was one of seven writers selected by Margaret Atwood for a special CBC Radio feature on new writers to watch, and a jury member for the CBC’s “Canada Reads” program for 2003. She is the recipient of many grants, fellowships, and writing awards, including the Gabriel Award for Radio.

The Age is her first novel.

The first segment is the interview, while in the second, Lee reads from the novel.

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*See The Interruption with Jordan Abel (whose book, The Place of Scraps, was shortlisted for the League of Canadian Poets' Gerald Lampert Memorial Award just after his session with Sean).