Jane Urquhart to give keynote speech at L.M. Montgomery conference

The L.M. Montgomery Institute's conference at UPEI began Thursday, and it has attracted a major Canadian author as one of its keynote speakers.

Jane Urquhart was the winner of the Governor General's Award for The Underpainter, as well as the author of such acclaimed works as The Stone Carvers and A Map of Glass.

She also published a biography of Lucy Maud Montgomery as part of Penguin's Extraordinary Canadians series.

With her address happening on Saturday, she was able to spend a few minutes with Angela Walker on CBC Radio's Mainstreet, going over the main points of her speech.

"About how Lucy Maud gave me permission, or influenced me, and also other Canadian writers, and not all of them female by the way, and how sense of place entered my work, likely as a child," she said. "When I thought about literature, I thought about place."

Obsessive reader

Urquhart described herself as a passionate reader of Montgomery's books, especially between the ages of eight to 12.

She pointed out that the majority of Montgomery's books had a place in the title, a community or a home, and her own obsessive reading of the books established that interest for her own writing career.

"The places named in the titles are essential to the texture of Montgomery's work," read Urquhart from her own afterword published in the New Canadian Library edition of the Emily series.

"Not only does rural landscape and architecture act as a mirror to various facets of character's individuality in the novels, but the details of geography are closely observed and described by the author."

Direct influence on her career

Urquhart said reading Montgomery created for her the possibility of becoming a writer.

"Not only had she become an internationally known author, she wrote about young Canadian girls who themselves wanted to be Canadian authors," she explained. "In the world in which Lucy Maud grew up, and in fact in the world which I grew up ... that was held as a pretty foolish notion altogether.

"We didn't have a lot of precedents to give us permission to even want to be a Canadian author, even entertain the notion. So to have someone like Lucy Maud Montgomery to read as a younger, developing creative person was so affirming."

Jane Urquhart is also doing a reading in Studio 1 of the Confederation Centre of the Arts on Friday at 7 p.m.

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