Bio
Helen Walsh’s debut novel, Pull Focus, will be published September 7, 2021 by ECW Press in Canada and the US, and October 7, 2021 in the UK.
A fiction podcast series which is a prequel to the novel premieres in May 2021 – sign up for the newsletter to receive updates.
Walsh is also the founder and president of Diaspora Dialogues, a charitable organization that supports writers to turn their craft into a career, through mentorship, professional development, and opportunities to present and publish their work.
Previously, Walsh was publisher and president of the Literary Review of Canada, a monthly book review magazine; director of Spur, a festival of politics, arts and ideas; and a film/digital media writer & producer in Canada and the US.
Walsh lives in Toronto.
FAQs
It’s a prequel to Pull Focus. Set seven years earlier, Jane is a senior programmer at the film festival vying to be named Artistic Director. Against her better judgement, and amidst intense political pressure, she agrees to the near-impossible challenge of producing a new festival in Muskoka on a short turnaround. But things are not what they seem. With celebrity cottagers like Goldie Hawn and Justin Bieber to one side of her, and politically exposed cabinet ministers on the other, Jane’s got to game fast while also dealing with the death of her father-in-law and its impact on the delicate entente of her personal life.
Stay tuned to the Events section of the website for updates on appearances, digital + live, in 2021. Sign up for the bi-monthly newsletter for news and highlights about the book, the festival world, the book and film industry, a little gossip… And please connect with me on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and/or Linked-In.
Like many people, I haven’t travelled anywhere since the Covid lock-down in March 2020, and have an enormous pent-up desire for movement. The news on vaccines and treatment is positive, and I believe we’ll be travelling and attending live events again by summer 2021. I hope my calendar will be filled with festival and book club appearances. (Cue invites…)
A good question! I’ve written the first draft of MASTER SHOT, which is a follow-up novel to PULL FOCUS, taking place four months later and set in the Bahamas.
For a dozen years, I’ve spent the month of August in Edinburgh for the festivals, primarily for the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the Edinburgh International Festival and the Edinburgh Fringe. (The Art Festival and the Tattoo also take place that month.) It is my very favourite time of the year. I originally started going at the invitation of British Council, who kindly hosted me as an international presenter for two years, and since then I’ve planned my holidays for August in Scotland.
There’s a breath-taking array of author talks and readings, main stage and fringe theatre, dance, opera, classical music, comedy and more to enjoy. (The fringe alone, for example, has almost 4,000 different shows, each with multiple performances.) Plus, there are amazing galleries and museums across Edinburgh, each with special exhibitions.
The city is jammed to the brim with culture – and people, to the dismay of some residents. But it’s magic.
Also in the UK, I love the Hay Festival and London Literary Festival. I’ve always wanted to attend – and have yet to make it – the Cheltenham Literary Festival and Wigtown Book Festival. One thing I love about the UK is how many festivals of one sort or another take place in cities and villages across Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Having a lot of close family in Ireland, and my father being buried in Mallow Co Cork, I try to spend as much time as possible there each year, primarily Dublin and Cork, but I regularly take driving holidays to other favourite places like Kinsale, Dingle Peninsula and Galway. I was fortunate enough to write parts of Pull Focus during two intensive writing residencies at The Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig in Co Monaghan.
Favourites Irish festivals include: International Literature Festival Dublin, Dublin Fringe Festival, and the Cork Film Festival. There are many I hope to get to soon, including Kilkenny Arts Festival, Cuirt, the International Festival of Literature in Galway, and Listowel Writers’ Week.
About a decade ago I went on a tour of festivals in Australia – Melbourne and Sidney – with the support of Canada Council and British Council. Such amazing cities and arts orgs, including the Sydney Writers Festival and the Wheeler Centre. For years now, I’ve wanted to attend the Jaipur Literature Festival but have yet to make my way to India for it. And my friend Shyam Selvadurai has repeatedly suggested I attend the Galle Literary Festival; he was the artistic director for several years. I hope to have the good fortune to attend one day.
Closer to home: who doesn’t adore the Toronto International Film Festival. For decades it has defined my September and the organization is, I’d argue, the most successful cultural organization in the country. I’ve also started going regularly to the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, in late January. Skiing Deer Valley and Sundance Resort during the day and watching movies at night is a slice of heaven.
I’ve also visited many other film and book festivals in Canada and the US with favourites including Toronto International Festival of Authors, Word on the Street Toronto, Wordfest, Vancouver Writers Fest and the Palm Springs Film Festival.
You might say I’m a little festival-mad. It’s not a holiday if there’s no festival to attend.
I’ve been surrounded by books ever since I was a little girl. Our christmas presents inevitably contained books – whether that was Wind in the Willows or Enid Blyton or the year I turned thirteen, both Lives of Girls and Women (Alice Munro) and Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy) which took years and multiple readings to understand.
Like many people, I found it difficult to read for the first few months of Covid. Concentration was lacking, a low level of anxiety ever-present. I mostly binge-watched Netflix and Prime; read a few thrillers that could propel me to turn the pages, and some poetry. But I kept buying books, so now the tables in my house overflow even more than normal and I am catching up on lost time.
In addition to getting through these, the following books are either on another table in my house or I saved book reviews to remind me to buy them:
Snow by John Banville
The Mirror & The Light by Hilary Mantel
A Burning by Megha Majumdar
Deacon King Kong by James McBride
The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi
His Only Wife by Peace Adzo Medie
Notes on a Silencing: A Memoir by Lacy Crawford
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
Sisters by Daisy Johnson
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Some upcoming Spring 2021 titles on my radar screen:
Deception by Anna Porter
Home of the Floating Lily by Silmy Abdullah
Tainna: The Unseen Ones, Short Stories by Norma Dunning
The Speed of Mercy, Christy Ann Conlin
This Eden by Ed O’Loughlin
Swimming Back to Trout River by Linda Rui Feng
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson
Strike Me Down by Mindy Mejia
Eleanor in the Village by Jan Jarboe Russell
The Soul of a Woman by Isabel Allende
Kill the Mall by Pasha Malla
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Relatives by Camilla Gibb
There are SO many great adaptations of novels to film or televisions but below are a few of my favourites. Would love to hear your favs; email me at info@helenwalsh.ca and/or connect with me on social media.
If you’re interested in the art of adaptations, I saw this amazing talk at the Hay Festival in Wales in 2018 with Andrew Davies, a Welsh screenwriter who specialises in literary adaptations.
Among his many successes are Vanity Fair (William Thackeray), A Suitable Boy (Vikram Seth), Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen), –Middlemarch (George Elliot), Bleak House (Charles Dickens), War & Peace (Leo Tolstoy), and Rabbit, Run (John Updike). . .to name only a few. Extraordinary that one writer should be capable of such range and skill.
I really enjoyed the conversation, which included Davies, his script editor and producer. They discussed the challenges of adapting Victor Hugos’s Les Misérables for television broadcast (six-hour series) but also overall their creative approach to adaptations.
https://www.hayfestival.com/p-13752-andrew-davies-laura-lankester-bethan-jones.aspx?skinid=16
Note: the talk is £10.00, but the money goes to the Hay Festival, which like every other festival in the world, had a brutal 2020, and could very much use your support. The talk is well worth the price of admission.
MY LIST!
Much Ado About Nothing – both versions
Play by William Shakespeare
Adapted and Directed by Kenneth Branagh
Adapted and Directed by Josh Weldon
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Novel by Milan Kudera
Adapted by Philip Kaufman and Jean-Claude Carrière.
Directed by Philip Kaufman
The English Patient
Novel by Michael Ondaatje
Adapted and Directed by Anthony Minghella
Killing Eve – love love love the writing on this
Novel by Like Jennings
Adapted by Phoebe Waller Bridge
Directed by various.
The Talented Mr Ripley
Novel by Patricia Highsmith
Adapted and Directed by Anthony Minghella
Big Little Lies (Season 1)
Novel by Liane Moriarity
Adapted by David E Kelley
Directed by Jean-Marc Vallee
Funny Boy
Novel by Shyam Selvadurai
Adapted by Shyam Selvadurai
Directed by Deepa Mehta
It’s easy. And fun! Click here.
Pull Focus is structured as twenty chapters, each the ten days of the festival comprising two chapters each. (Yes, I know, technically there are now eleven days of TIFF, but the last day isn’t a substantial day.) Each day is named after a famous film that mirrors the plot. The playlist below is pulled from the soundtracks of those films (except Sex, Lies and Videotape and with the addition of Killing Eve, with which I am currently obsessed.)
I’ve Written a Letter to Daddy
from Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
Music by Frank De Vol, Lyrics by Bob Merrill
Performed by Bette Davis
Strangers In The Night
from Eyes Wide Shut
Peter Hughes Orchestra (in the film) but who doesn’t love the Frank Sinatra version!
I Got it Bad (And That Ain’t Good)
from Eyes Wide Shut
The Oscar Peterson Trio (in the film) but Nina Simone’s version is my very favourite
Happy Days Are Here Again
from Gathering Storm
Jack Hylton and His Orchestra (in the film) but Barbara Streisand has performed many interpretations of this song over the years.
Just a Little
from Eastern Promises
Liberty X
Puppet Man
from Our Brand is Crisis
Tom Jones
Prelude, OP. 28, NO. 15
from Margin Call
Frederic Chopin
Why do We Fall
from The Dark Knight Rises
Composed by by Hans Zimmer
A Satisfied Mind
From Kill Bill
Johnnie Cash
Malagueña Salerosa
from Kill Bill
Chingon
Come & Get It
from Citizenfour
Selena Gomez
When A Woman Is Around
from Killing Eve
Unloved