Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer

Cover Art

Many people have asked me about the cover of Perfecting and I always unwrap the book to show them the effect of the whole diptych. I knew I would want the lion’s share of control when it came to cover design. The book was such a long labour (of love) and I wanted it represented just so. So began the long trawl on the internet and beyond for the perfect image. There was a solid short list but nothing really it, until I came across the work of Polly Chandler. She is a brilliant American photographer working in various unusual media (pin-hole, Polaroid, toy camera) and what an eye.

If you go to her website and hold your mouse on the diptych that is now my book cover, the jpg tag reads, “action=spoof” which itself is perfect for a novel that plays with the landscape of the western as an analog for America. Funny, when the book was published I noticed the photo had a new name. It was called “unknown model”. I don’t know, Polly! You got pretty close to that guy for him to be unknown…

I love the front cover image because it can be read so many ways. Praying hands, but pointing down not up, dead person, praying hands, live person. A writer friend of mine, said, “It’s a girl’s junk, you know?” which I hadn’t seen until she saw it. I love the light, too, as it reminds me of the early Dutch painters — that glow!

Here is another favourite Polly Chandler which might have made the cover, too, but for the detail of publishers not liking faces to adorn covers. Apparently, it interferes with the reader bonding or something. Well, okay, maybe it does, like the way a film version can taint a book.

©Polly Chandler

Upcoming Toronto reading- Bloor/Gladstone Library

Design Rendering of the Bloor Gladstone Library renovation

I’ll be reading to celebrate the library opening on November 24th at 7 pm. The FB event page can be found here:

Erotic reading party

Book Club Evening

Bees, the perfect wine accompaniment to Perfecting

Okay, I know the words are on backwards but the closest thing I had to a camera last night was photobooth on my laptop. And last night was worth remembering because it (at least for me) transpired at an undisclosed bookclub location on Hewitt. The bookclub host had made an extravagant meal for her guests themed on New Mexico and Ontario, the main places in Perfecting. So, Tex-Mex squash soup, pecan squares (Oh my!!), Ontario cheeses, and Ontario 20 Bees wine (you can see there was drinking by the emptiness of the bottles…). To honour the bees further, here is a bee-ish excerpt from the book:

It was sudden then, what happened. Curtis could name it even as it did: a swarm. The worker bees sensed the intrusion of a young Queen and rejected her. They moved out of the hive, as one, with the old Queen, loyal. It was like an apparition, an alien sighting, he thought, the way the swarm contracted and swung through the air. It was like the swarming bees were a simultaneous singular presence. They were trying to form one entity, something he had read about years ago when he was starting the hives. Also he thought of Ether 2:3: ‘and thus they did carry with them swarms of bees.’ Curtis wondered at the magnitude of this sign to him — that Martha should leave, and that he must follow. (p.108-109, Perfecting)

The book Curtis refers to having read is Bees by Rudolf Steiner, the most spiritual farmer ever. In his lectures on beekeeping he is quoted as saying: You see, with bees it is always the case that only very few chosen females, the queen bees, take care of all the propagation of the species. With the rest, the sexual life is more or less repressed, but in this sexual life there is another element—love life—which is, above all, a matter concerning the soul. (p.2) Bees)

If you think of bees from this perspective, their product, honey, becomes spiritually supercharged, like a locket of hair from a favourite Saint, or a splinter of wood from the cross. Plenty of people believe honey to be healing.

Thanks to my new favourite bookclub for the swell conversation last night!

Avedon's Beautiful Portrait of Ronald Fischer: Beekeeper

Afghan war rug

A nice review from Elizabeth Baines from across the pond:

The novel itself has its own kind of class: it’s the product of a committed intelligence with a passion to expose the reverberations of violence in our society both on the personal and parochial level and the political and international, and the role religion can play.

The Green Books Campaign is an initiative to get publicity for eco-friendly publishing. My books have all been printed on Ancient Forest Friendly paper, and I am quite proud of that. Once a tree planter, always a tree lover.