Q & A with Bert Riggs

1. What other jobs have you had besides being a writer?

In addition to being a writer, I have been a bartender, a builder of hiking trails, a teacher in both high school and at university and, of course, my long-term job as an archivist. In fact, archivist is my major occupation and I have served in that capacity at Memorial University’s Queen Elizabeth II Library since 1984.

2. What was your first piece in print (book, review, or article, etc)?

My first piece in print would have been various bits and pieces, including editorials, that I wrote for my high school’s monthly student publication. Then there was the really bad poem I wrote that appeared in my residence yearbook the first year I was at Memorial. It was not until I went to work as a researcher and writer with the Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador and its first volume was published in 1981 that I will lay claim to any writing of merit.

3. When do you like to write (time of day, day of week)? Where do you do your writing (location)?

I like writing late at night and the wee hours of the morning when there is the least possibility of being disturbed by telephone calls or people dropping by.

4. What do you like to do in your free time?

I like to read, spend time with friends, cook, especially for dinner parties of eight or ten people. I once cooked dinner for the British novelist Sebastian Faulks.

5. What is your favourite food?

My favourite food is lamb – any way but raw!

6. What kind of music do you listen to?

I listen to all kinds of music from classical to Broadway musicals to traditional Newfoundland to contemporary. I have a soft spot for Anita Best, Willie Nelson, Patsy Cline and George Frederick Handel.

7. If you could live during any time period and in any place, when and where would you choose?

Right here, right now!

8. What is your favourite book(s)?

There is no one favourite but the top five are everything by Muriel Spark, The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, Random Passage by Bernice Morgan, Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx and Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden.

9. What are you reading now?

Jane Eyre for the nth time: I am teaching it to my first-year English students and am rereading it right along with them.

10. Make a question of your own and then answer it.

Who do you most admire, living or dead?

My mother who gave me birth, nurtured and cared for me daily through the first 17 years of my life, and who instilled with the ability to love others, to accept disappointments gracefully and to work as hard as I possibly could, which has enabled me to be much more successful than I have ever dreamed.