Reykjavík Grapevine - 01.08.2014, Qupperneq 36

36 The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 11 — 2014LITERATURE
Breakfast
Brunch
Lunch
Happy Hour
Dinner
K-Bar is a gastro pub with a Korean, Japa-
nese, Icelandic inspired kitchen and quirky
cocktails. We have eight icelandic craft
beers on tap and over 100 types in bottles.
Open all day from breakfast to late night
snacks. K-Bar is located at Laugavegur 74.
Ask your reception how to find us or find us
on facebook.com/kbarreykjavik
It’s Your Book
and Your Voice
Andrew may be more familiar with
Iceland than some of the other seven
authors attending from Canada, the
UK, and the US, but it’s clear from
everyone’s introductions that they
are all equally intrigued with the idea
of spending a week talking craft and
literature here in the North Atlantic—
particularly those whose experience
with Iceland has been limited to touch-
downs at Keflavík or short stopovers.
“I came away from Iceland with the
sense that it was the kind of place you
could hang out and play with a whale,”
laughs New Yorker staff writer and
author Susan Orlean, who previously
visited Iceland to learn more about
(failed) efforts to rewild Keiko the
whale (of ‘Free Willy’ fame).
“I’ve only been here on layover,”
Canadian author and professor Randy
Boyagoda remarks. “My great regret
is going on to Paris instead of staying
here.”
Travel writer Sara Wheeler, who
has journeyed extensively around both
poles, takes a somewhat longer view.
“I have very happy memories of my last
stop in Iceland,” she says, recalling
impressions made during a research
trip around Siberia and the Arctic
Circle. “I had just gotten off a Russian
icebreaker and it felt like I was in the
Deep South. It was so metropolitan…
The Antarctic is a symbol of what the
world could be; the Arctic is a symbol
of what the world is.”
Don’t apologise
For a workshop event in its first year—
let alone one in its first year hosted in
a somewhat unlikely Northern island
location—the Iceland Writers Retreat
already shows a rather remarkable
polish. This is owing primarily to the
herculean efforts of retreat founders
Eliza Reid and Erica Jacobs Green,
both full-time professionals—Eliza, as
the owner of a marketing company
and the editor of Icelandair’s in-flight
magazine; Erica as a senior editor of
National Geographic’s children’s book
division—as well as a troop of plucky
volunteers who at any given time are
to be found snapping photos, manning
overhead projectors, restocking water
bottles and pens, giving directions,
shuttling authors between events
and generally appearing exactly when
they’re needed.
It’s a flurry of activity which mani-
fests as an orderly and personable
series of events for the retreat partici-
pants, both locals and those who have
travelled quite a distance—including
from Singapore, Chile, Canada and
the U.S.—to attend five workshops (no
more than 15 participants each) led by
such luminaries as Pulitzer Prize win-
ner Geraldine Brooks.
The size of the workshops, as much
as the general openness of the au-
thors, lends an immediate intimacy to
the proceedings as can be observed
upon entering Geraldine’s session en-
titled ‘The Distance Travelled: From
Journalist to Novelist,’ where the au-
thor is chatting with an attendee about
the possibility of seeing some Icelandic
horses while she’s in town.
One of the only authors to assign
“homework”—a personal introduction
of 300 words or less—Geraldine starts
her session by asking everyone (the
group happens to be entirely com-
prised of women) to read their pieces
aloud. After the first rather extensive
CV is finished, the next reader pauses,
a bit nervously. “I’m sorry,” she says.
“Mine’s not that good.”
Geraldine sits up a bit straighter at
this: “Don’t apologise,” she says firmly.
“This is really important, since we are
a room full of women.” She admits that
she always feels the need to be self-
deprecating, particularly when receiv-
ing compliments: “If someone compli-
ments my boots, I feel the need to say,
‘oh, but they’re so scuffed.’” She then
reiterates her remonstrance—women,
stop apologising for everything—and
gently encourages the reader to begin.
Very nearly half of the following partic-
ipants begin their own narrations with
the quiet mantra: “I won’t apologise!”
In her soft but no less assertive
voice, with its slightly lyrical Austra-
lian twang, Geraldine then gives her
own quick personal introduction. The
daughter of a Sydney newspaper’s
proofreader, she was struck with
the—at that time—unlikely ambition of
becoming a journalist when she was
eight years old. Standing in a room full
of printing presses, she recalls being
handed a freshly printed newspaper.
“And it was warm,” she half-whispers,
delightedly. “It was hot off the press-
es!”
She giggles at that literal memory
before sharing various useful tips
gathered in her years as a journalist,
first reporting the results of local horse
and dog races and later as a war cor-
respondent for The Wall Street Jour-
nal. She stresses the importance of
a writer being able to draw from her
own life experiences. “You can know a
thing from one context,” she says, “and
then write about it from another. Any
experience that is deeply felt, you can
“Iceland is like a disease you can’t get rid of.” This from Andrew Evans, National Geo-
graphic’s ‘Digital Nomad,’ by way of introducing the locally set travel essay that he’s
reading to kick off the first ever Iceland Writers Retreat. It’s clear that he means this in a
good way—Andrew first came to Iceland in 1998, has been back “dozens” of times since,
and has authored a Bradt travel guide to the island.
Photo
Provided by Writers Retreat
Words
Larissa Kyzer
www.icelandwritersretreat.comRegistration opened
on July 28, 2014 Writers Retreat
Writing is fun again at the
Iceland Writers Retreat