Booker nominee Esi Edugyan on how her upbringing influenced her new children's book
The acclaimed author of Washington Black talks about her latest release, Garden of Lost Socks
Esi Edugyan is one of Canada's most acclaimed writers, having received multiple accolades for her meticulously researched historical fiction.
She made history in 2011 when she became the first Black woman to win the Scotiabank Giller Prize for her novel Half-Blood Blues, and she won a second time in 2018 for Washington Black — something only achieved twice before by Alice Munro and Moyez G. Vassanji.
Now, Edugyan has written her first children's book, Garden of Lost Socks. In an interview with Q's Tom Power, she says the entire experience has been a delight.
"Children's events are really quite wonderful," Edugyan tells Power about touring the book. "The audiences are so interesting and engaged — and you know they're engaged because they're slowly creeping closer."
Unusual upbringing
Garden of Lost Socks is a picture book illustrated by Montreal-based artist and illustrator Amélie Dubois.
The book follows Akosua, a self-proclaimed "Exquirologist" (a made up word that means "finder of lost things," according to Edugyan). In the book, Akosua goes on a journey to discover the magic hidden in her own community.
"This was inspired by the fact that a few years ago I had enlisted my children to at least put away their own laundry," Edugyan recalls. "At the end of it, there would be this huge mound of socks without pairs, and we never discovered where these singular socks went."
Edugyan elaborates that the made-up word is inspired by "this thing that kids do … where they're wanting to make up these huge words that don't exist."
"Maybe that is rooted in something, and so it felt very apt to have [Akosua] make up that word," she says.
But Edugyan wasn't just inspired by her current home life. She also drew inspiration from her childhood.
"When I was a kid back in the '80s in Calgary in the summertime, you were just roaming freely through your neighborhood," reflects Edugyan. "You'd get on your bike in the morning and bike all around…. It's a much more regimented childhood these days where you've got all sorts of activities on a schedule.
"Part of what I was doing with this book was having a bit of nostalgia about that existence where children did have more agency to kind of wander," she adds.
Freedom in the pandemic
Garden of Lost Socks follows themes of friendship, curiosity and the magic of community.
Bu, Edugyan also emphasizes how writing the picture book gave her a sense of freedom that had been absent in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"It was such a breath of fresh air," she says. "It was really what I needed at that moment…. I think we were just coming out of lockdown, but it was still a time that was kind of shadowed by this feeling of being cloistered."
Edugyan began the book in her usual way: with a notebook on her bedside table.
"[I was] just jotting out the skeleton of this idea for this book and feeling just wonderful," she tells Power. "Here was something that I could do that was not heavily research-based, that was lighter.… That first draft was just so instantaneous and it was just such a pleasure."
Giving out prizes
Apart from her new book, Edugyan has continued to establish herself amongst the literary elite.
A former Booker Prize nominee herself, Edugyan has been selected as chair of the jury for 2023.
She says that chairing the Booker jury feels like a huge responsibility.
"I went from writing in total obscurity to having a bit of a wider readership, and the Booker and the Giller were singularly responsible for that shift in my fortunes," she reflects. "I'm very aware that this is something that I'm not doing lightly and my fellow jurists aren't doing this lightly.
"It's a very impassioned thing, and we're aware of the impact that the prize can have."
The full interview with Esi Edugyan is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Interview with Esi Edugyan produced by Glory Omotayo.
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