Camosun alumna Margot Fedoruk’s Cooking Tips for Desperate Fish Wives: An Island Memoir hit shelves on October 18. The book explores family dysfunction, untimely loss, and her life as a mother and wife on Gabriola Island.
Fedoruk received her Resident Care Attendant certificate in 1995 from Camosun and recently received her BA in Creative Writing at Vancouver Island University [VIU], where she developed her writing skills and built essential connections with her professors.
“I went to Camosun College in 1995,” says Fedoruk. “I chose the Resident Care Aide course because I noticed there was a lot of work for it at the time in Victoria… I first started [writing] by maybe taking a few courses here and there online and, mainly, it was just to develop my skills, and then I realized the benefit of creating relationships with my professors who have all been in the field of publishing and as professional writers, like how important that was to make these connections. So, that was really important for me.”
While writing was always a passion for Fedoruk, she didn’t have the time or space to give to it alongside raising a family. By studying creative writing, she could devote her time and find room for it regularly.
“As many writers tell you, we were all big readers. Like, that’s all I ever did,” says Fedoruk. “Under the covers, I’d get in trouble for reading with a flashlight. I loved reading and writing when I was younger, and then it’s always been in the back of my mind, ‘I wish I could write a book.’ But, you know, I had children, had to raise a family, so I’d write a little bit here and there, but I never had the time or space to develop my craft, which school gave me.”
Almost all of Fedoruk’s creative writing assignments for school made it into her memoir. Her writing process consisted of immersing herself in memories, like reading the books she read when she was pregnant and writing her stories from those memories.
“Fun fact—almost every assignment that I worked on for school has been either the seed for my book or chapters of my book,” she says. “Let’s say I was trying to remember something many, many years ago. Maybe it was 30 years ago when I was pregnant on a boat with my first daughter. So, I would say, ‘Okay, how can I write about this to make it interesting?’ So, I went to the library to find the same old book I was reading to prompt my memories.”
Next, Fedoruk hopes to create a graphic-novel memoir detailing her life stories by taking inspiration from her childhood diary entries. She also wants to share stories from family members like her grandparents.
“I just started graduate school, so I feel like I don’t have much time, but I really want to write a graphic novel,” she says. “It’s also a graphic memoir going more into my baba’s life because she was a very interesting woman… That’s kind of what I’m hoping to get done next.”
As a reader, Fedoruk enjoys stories about ordinary women and finding similarities between her life and theirs. She says that she hopes readers will also enjoy learning about her ordinary yet unique life of being married to a sea urchin diver and living on Gabriola island.
“I just want them to know my experience, my life,” she says. “My favourite thing in the world is to read memoirs by ordinary women, and I like to think that I’m just another ordinary woman who’s putting their voice in the world.”