STARFest Logo
2024 Event: Elizabeth Hay
In conversation with Writer in Residence Katie Bickell
Elizabeth Hay on writing: “I like to write with a pen or pencil on paper. I have a rocking chair with wide arms in my second-floor study. I sit in the chair, place a piece of plywood across the arms and write on that flat surface. I got the idea from reading about Virginia Woolf, who worked the same way in the grubby back of the house where they printed the books for Hogarth Press. It gives me much more peace of mind to work this way than directly in front of a computer screen.”

At the heart of Hay’s newest novel, Snow Road Station, is the friendship between Lulu and Nan, now in their sixties and contemplating what to make of the rest of their lives.

About Elizabeth Hay

Elizabeth Hay is the Giller-Prize winning author of six novels, including Late Nights on Air, His Whole Life, and A Student of Weather. Her memoir about her parents, All Things Consoled, won the Hilary Weston Writers’ Prize for Nonfiction. A former radio broadcaster with the CBC, she spent a number of years in Mexico and New York City, and makes her home in Ottawa.

Snow Road Station (2023)

snow road stationIn the winter of 2008, as snow falls without interruption, an actor in a Beckett play blanks on her lines. Fleeing the theatre, Lulu beats a retreat into her past and arrives at Snow Road Station, a barely discernible dot on the map of Ontario. At the heart of the novel is the lifelong friendship between Lulu and Nan, in their sixties now and contemplating what to make of the rest of their lives.