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Mount Royal Collegiate
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Mount Royal students make virtual connection with Giller Prize winner

January 19, 2021

MRC Giller news2.jpgThe personal experience of author Souvankham Thammavongsa and stories from her Giller Prize-wining collection of short stories resonated with students at Mount Royal Collegiate during a recent virtual meeting.

In December, Grade 12 ELA students at Mount Royal had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to speak with Thammavongsa, who was awarded the Giller Prize on Nov. 9 for How to Pronounce Knife, a collection that presents the beauty, humanity, and struggle of the immigrant experience.

Her session with the students at Mount Royal was one of only five such meetings with individual classrooms across the country and was arranged through First Book Canada, an organization that works to improve access to educational opportunities.

Copies of How to Pronounce Knife were gifted to students and staff involved in the meeting by First Book Canada. The class was able to study a selection of stories from the collection, as well as watch and read interviews with Thammavongsa in preparation for the meeting. Another integral part of the preparations involved students formulating questions to ask the author.

After watching a video of Thammavongsa reacting to her Giller Prize win, listening to an interview about her life and writing, and reading several of her stories, students came to the session with a true sense of the significance of the experience, and there was a genuine feeling of excitement in the air as the Zoom meeting commenced. This feeling was particularly evident when students got to step up to the microphone and ask their heartfelt and insightful questions directly to the author.

Before the class had heard from the author, there was a feeling of reverence in the room and a sense of shared space, even though the experience was virtual.

MRCI, Giller, 3.jpgThe session began with a reading from the short story Mani-Pedi. The impact of hearing directly from the creator of a work we had studied was immediate. The author exuded a quiet and persistent joy, to which the students responded. Two things we understand at Mount Royal are community and integrity and this, in combination with Thammavongsa's honest and warm energy, created a real community for the hour that we were with her, even though we were separated by over 2,000 kilometres. The reading was followed by a very moving PowerPoint poem presentation by the author, then the Q & A session.

Overall, our students connected to the stories they read, and to the author as she shared her life experiences as a refugee and marginalized person in the Canadian context. It was apparent from their questions and their feedback that many of the students at Mount Royal who participated in this experience saw themselves reflected in the stories and life of a woman who came to this country as a refugee and who has now won the most prestigious award for literature in English in our country. The power of this moment was not lost on them.  

The pandemic has thrown many challenges our way but is also the reason this opportunity was made available to classrooms across the country. We were given the gift of connection when, throughout the world, we are currently so disconnected.

— Kimberly Macleod and Emily McKay,
Mount Royal teachers