Lara Stokes

Lara Stokes grew up in Northern Ontario and now lives and writes in Kawartha Lakes, Ontario. Her work has appeared in The Danforth Review, The Ottawa Arts Review, Burnt Toast (newsletter for The Writer’s Union of Canada) and has been shortlisted for the Toronto Fringe New Play Contest and Geist’s CanLit Short Fiction contest. In 2007 she completed an Honors BA in Theatre and Creative Writing at York University, where she was the recipient of the b.p. Nichol award and the Judith Eve Gewertz Award.

Stokes's debut novel is Midsummer Nights.

Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Stokes's reply:

I just finished Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley, a love story told through the soundtrack of the relationship. Set in the early 2000's, this was such a sweet spot for me, as the timeline coincides almost exactly with my university years, when I was very into music and had every back issue of SPIN magazine to impress boys with my musical knowledge. The book tracks the relationship between a music writer and the songwriter she inspires, and dips in and out of music trends of the time as well as classic 'deep cuts'. The author has created a great Spotify playlist to accompany - my only complaint is that I read this while camping, and didn't find the playlist until after reading. It made for a nice epilogue!

I also recently read We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman. It follows a woman at the end of her best friend's life, as they move through their final goodbyes and the many complex layers of grief that can happen before we lose someone. It is based on Newman's own experience of losing a close friend to cancer, and I read this very much on purpose as I have just been through a similar loss. In grief, there is often the desire to escape (and trust me, I am reading plenty to escape) but there was something very cathartic about going into the fire with fictional characters, living there with them, and giving space to my own grief. This book is incredibly sad but also so incredibly funny, scandalous, human and healing. Sometimes the right book is grace in your hands. (And if grief books are also your thing, you must read Cleo Dang Would Rather Be Dead by Mai Nguyen. Incredible.)

Curveball at the end to cheer things up: as per the above escape, I have been rewatching Fleabag, which has led me to read Fleabag: The Scriptures, the book version of the scripts with notes and essays from Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Part of my writing background is playwriting (my own book is set in the theatre) and having a strong foundation in theatre scripts has really influenced my own writing. It was great fun, then, to read the TV scripts of an adapted play, noting what changes from stage to screen to page. In any form, it's some of the weirdest, cleanest, funniest dialogue. We need more Phoebe!

Up next is Lady Tremaine by Rachel Hochhauser. Justice for Stepmothers!

Visit Lara Stokes's website.

--Marshal Zeringue