20th Anniversary Spotlight: Aimee Wall
Our 20th-anniversary celebrations continue with another Author Spotlight interview. Today, we’re shining a light on Aimee Wall. We have had the pleasure of working with Aimee as an author, as well as a translator. In 2021 we published Aimee’s debut novel We, Jane, but we have been working with her since 2016 when she first translated Vickie Gendreau’s Testament. Since then Aimee has also translated Gendreau’s Drama Queens, Jean-Phillippe Baril Guérard’s Sports and Pastimes, and Clara Dupuis-Morency’s Sadie X. It has been so lovely developing our relationship with Aimee, and she has played a massive role in our growth as publishers of literature in translation from French-Canada.
In our Q&A with Aimee, she shares what it means to be part of the Book*hug author family, highlights two titles by fellow Book*hug author Rune Christiansen that have left a lasting impression on her, and reflects on independent publishing. Happy reading!
B*: What does being part of the Book*hug Press author family mean to you? Please share an anecdote, reflection, or backstory about your publishing experience?
My relationship with Book*hug began with my first translation, of Vickie Gendreau’s Testament in 2016, and the whole time I was working on my own first novel, I hoped it, too, would find a place at Book*hug—in fact, I didn’t even consider any other alternatives. It felt like my greatest good fortune that Jay and Hazel took a chance on me with that first translation when I was just starting out, and I immediately knew I wanted to keep working with them as much as I could. Malcolm Sutton was my editor for We, Jane, and working on the novel with him was such a wonderful experience. I’ve never stopped feeling grateful for the thoughtful care he put into my book, and all the work on the part of the whole Book*hug team to bring it out into the world.
B*: Can you share another title or two from the Book*hug Press catalogue that has left a lasting impression on you as a reader? Tell us about a book that has been a touchstone for you, one that you found meaningful, interesting, or simply loved.
I’m a big fan of many Book*hug authors, but I particularly appreciate the Literature in Translation series for giving us access to so much great work in other languages. I love Rune Christiansen’s novels Fanny and the Mystery in the Grieving Forest and The Loneliness in Lydia Erneman’s Life, both beautifully translated by Kari Dickson. His novels draw you so completely into their worlds, and there is something almost radical to me about the quiet in them. They feel like loving, luminous portraits of daily life, and how grief and love and loneliness are felt on the scale of moments and days. I look very forward to seeing more of his work in translation.
When we see more large publisher consolidations and huge conglomerates dominating the marketplace, what does it mean to you to be published by an independent publisher like Book*hug Press?
It feels essential to me that independent publishers survive and thrive. That’s where almost everything that interests me is happening in literature and that’s where I want to be. A press like Book*hug has its own unique identity and voice, and the books they publish retain their particular spikiness or playfulness or strangeness. I’m happy to be published by a press with a real commitment to literature (including literature in translation!), and I have great respect for the hard, often unglamorous work this entails.
