Brent van Staalduinen: On Marriage, Miriam Toews and finding meaning in the work
Why I Write: Q & A with author Brent van Staalduinen
Brent van Staalduinen is the award-winning and bestselling author of the novels Unthinkable, Nothing But Life, and Boy, and the forthcoming novels The Peace Thieves and Do Not Count the Days. His stories have appeared in journals on both sides of the Atlantic, and have won the Bristol Short Story Prize, the Fiddlehead Best Fiction Award, the Lush Triumphant Literary Award, and numerous other accolades. He lives, writes, and teaches in Hamilton.
Describe your writing space. What do you love about it?
After being nomadic in my own home for years, when we built a new garage, I was able to claim a corner for my very own “forever” writing space. It’s climate-controlled and quiet and filled with nerdy things like football scarves, Lego, and assorted Star Wars memorabilia, so I love that it’s genuinely my own. I’m spoiled, privileged, grateful, and blessed.
How important is it to have ‘a room of one’s own’?
Again, I’m incredibly privileged to have my own room, my own retreat, and it’s beyond wonderful; that said, it’s not life or salvation, and if I didn’t have it, I’d find somewhere else to put words together.
Any rules for when you’re in this ‘space’?
No. Generally, my family tries not to interrupt if I’m working, but they also know that they can drop in anytime for any reason. I can’t imagine writing anything that would make my favourite humans second best.
What is your writing practice like?
I’m at my creative best early in the morning, so my wonderful wife Rosalee has given me her blessing to breakfast, make my coffee, and get writing as soon as I can every day. I manage to bang a few words out every time I sit at the keyboard, and I’ve been successful because of this routine. Again, blessed, privileged, grateful.
Do you quantify your process by word count or hours spent writing?
Family, mental health, and life come first; word and page counts are way down the priority list.
What is your creative process like?
Creation is for mornings: alarm goes off, I kiss my wife, take care of a few morning essentials, eat my cereal, make my coffee, assemble lunches for the girls, and head out to my office. I putter and check the news for twenty minutes or so, then open Scrivener and get plunking away on the keyboard. Pop inside for a bit to help with the daily school exodus, then back to my office. Later in the morning is admin and editing time: Emails, publicity, mentoring, editing, proofreading, etc. Afternoons are for napping, reading, or teaching. After drafting a new project, I polish it until I can’t look at it any longer, then carry it to my wife, who’s always my first reader. Then I do another round or two of fixing, nudging, screaming, bleeding, crying. Finally, when I have a story or novel ready to submit, I send the manuscript everywhere I possibly can and immediately move on to the next project. There are too many stories to tell, too few days ahead of me, and too little predictability in publishing timelines. Best to stay busy.
What is the easiest and most difficult part of the process for you?
Creation is the easiest because there are few limits. Hearing criticism and editing are the hardest, but are of course always essential, and I begrudgingly love the results. Kind of like cardio, eating green things, or saying no to Ruffles with Helluva dip.
Why do you write? What do you love about writing?
I write because I’ve been given a gift, and I want that gift to help make the world more meaningful and more beautiful. Stories are part of our DNA, so crafting stories connects me to one piece of the universal human experience. I write to make my people proud of me. I write to let the stories out, so my brain doesn’t explode. I write to find that moment of pure creation, where I sit back from the keyboard and realize I’m crying, where I can pump my fist at the words I’ve just assembled, where I realize I’ve written the last line and it’s pretty damn good. I also write because books smell amazing, and when they contain my words, they smell even better.
How do you manage writing with other demands on your time?
Writing isn’t a hobby or merely a creative outlet for me, and I view it as both joy and job. I need rhythm and routine to be productive, full stop, so my morning writing time is sacrosanct: every morning (Monday-Friday and the occasional Saturday if I’m really crushing a project) sees me at my desk and working. Sometimes life gets in the way, where that bloodwork appointment happens bright and early or a sick daughter needs caring for, but we schedule to preserve it as much as we can. A fellow writer once got grumpy at a reading event when I answered an audience question this way, rebutting the write-every-day habit and saying it can’t work for everyone, but it does for me. I call myself a working writer, which means I take the demands and challenges seriously—I also know my procrastinatory self all too well, so routines are essential. I do loosen up in summer if I can, which is when I do more things outside and with my hands, and let my mind refresh as I tackle bigger projects around the house.
What has influenced you most as a writer?
My marriage. Rosalee encourages me to create, guards my gift, and enjoys my words. And reading—I wouldn’t do this thing if I hadn’t been shown early (thanks to my literature-loving Mom and Dad) how necessary storytelling is.
Do you want each book to stand on its own, or are you trying to build a body of work with connections between each book?
My conscious brain is convinced they’re all independent and unique, but I have a feeling my readers and my subconscious self know better.
Best advice you’ve ever been given.
1. Write what you would like to read.
2. Read all the things.
3. You can’t call yourself a writer if you don’t write: get working.
4. Don’t wait for anything, and always have a next project ready to go.
5. Celebrate your successes and spend some money to do so.
What does success look like to you?
I have a shelf above my desk where I’ve lined up all my publications, which is a celebration of the fact that I can write, and that others think so, too. Next to those sits a rotating handful of books that inspire me, which remind me that I can always be better. On my screen, just behind this Word window, is my browser opened to our bank accounts, which tells me that I am definitely not doing this gorgeous and essential thing for the money. On my walls are artworks produced by family and friends, and various photos of my Rosalee, Nora, and Alida: the best evidence that, in all things that matter, I’ve already arrived.
Tell us a few things that would surprise us to learn about you: the person, the writer.
In the army, I was a medic but also a gold-level marksman, a delightful paradox.
I was born in New Delhi.
My midlife joy-crisis has taken the form of getting into professional football (some call it soccer). I am a genuine evangelist for the Canadian Premier League and my boys, Hamilton’s Forge FC.
My favourite flower is the sand cherry, the scent of which makes all other flowers blush.
I can eat and enjoy Indian and Thai food at full heat. Yum.
What can books teach us? How do they change us?
Without exception, everything communicated is story, can only be expressed as story, and everyone touched by story is immediately changed (it’s a fabulous challenge to try and find an exception: even art, music, math, chemistry need story to communicate anything). Being able to contribute (even in a tiny way) to one of a few human universals is humbling.
What was a transformative book for you in your life?
I’ll pair two, if that’s okay: A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews and Searching for Sunday by the late Rachel Held Evans. These two incredible writers write about the pain and harm of organized religion with such grace it makes me emotional, and they have helped me craft better stories and characters that explore the miracle of duality, that we can be the push and pull of faithful and doubtful, good and bad, light and dark.
Which authors, living or dead, would you most like to discuss writing with?
Miriam Toews
Rachel Held Evans
Frederik Backman
Kate Bowler
Stephen King
What books are you currently loving?
My Father’s House and The Ghosts of Rome by Joseph O’Connor.
The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our “Correct” Beliefs by Peter Enns.
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell.
Braving the Truth: Essential Essays with Reckoning with and Reimagining Faith by Rachel Held Evans
Who are your favourite writers writing today?
Miriam Toews
Frederik Backman
Anthony Doerr
Stephen King
Justin Cronin
Peter Heller
Megan Hunter
If you were a bookseller, what 5 books would you hand-sell to readers?
Beartown, Us Against You, and The Winners (the Beartown Trilogy) by Frederik Backman
Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese
Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
The End We Start From by Megan Hunter
Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down by Anne Valente
The Break by Katherina Vermette
Searching For Sunday by Rachel Held Evans
What advice do you have for writers?
1. Bum in chair and write. As often as you can.
2. Write what you like reading.
3. Read all the things.
4. Write with nouns and verbs, and use adjectives and adverbs sparingly.
5. Find a writer’s group with folks who’re better than you and don’t be precious about your words.
6. For those who seek publication, become best friends with rejection but keep writing and submitting.
7. Exercise regularly and eat good things.
8. Open the vein, bleed on the page, take risks.
9. First drafts are usually shitty, but they probably won’t stay that way if you do the work.
10. Have another career as well as writing—it’s good literary cross training, and steady paycheques are a good thing.
11. Be kind to others and to yourself. You got this.
12. Go to festivals, workshops, readings, panels. Meet others of your tribe. Be inspired.
13. Bum in chair. Write. Edit. Submit.
14. Repeat.
Thank you Brent.
The Peace Thieves was published June 2, 2026 by Thistledown Press.
This compelling and ambitious novel is about the search for peace during a civil war and through its long, complicated aftermath.
The Peace Thieves has the courage to ask tough questions about the true costs of war, not only to the citizens of the country where the conflict occurs, but to the people who attempt to help and protect them.
A deeply felt and deeply affecting look at the vicissitudes of war and its aftermath. Brent van Staalduinen captures the inner lives of his characters with a compassion and humour that for all their traumas makes their journey ultimately an uplifting one.
— Nino Ricci, author of The Origin of Species
Thank you to those who have submitted pieces. Look for those in the coming weeks.
Please keep submitting.
Email me your stories, any genre (no minimum word count but no more than 2500 words please).
I can’t wait to read what you’ve been writing.
Send to: stratfordartsandlectures@gmail.com
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