So we’ve been talking about your mother, Marian Clemens, and how her life has inspired some of your writing. How is your mom’s story a real Newfoundland story?
Because I don’t think Newfoundlanders give up. Like you’ve got no choice but to push on when everything around you is difficult.
 There was a resilience about outport women, and growing up in a small community, that taught you to work really hard and to not think that you’re not going to do the next step because you had to do the next step. Women, I think, were not taught to be ladylike because it was impractical to be ladylike and be out planting the potatoes and turning the fish and living a subsistence lifestyle. So a determined woman like mom was definitely a product of that time.

She mustn’t have remembered her mother.
No, she had very vague, vague memories. [As an adult she] went back to the community and she forgot that they didn’t have flush toilets, and I said, Mom, how’d you forget that? She said, I don’t know, it’s almost like I forgot that whole part of my life. When I went into the orphanage, that was my world. And when I went back, it was a real shock. She didn’t fit in there anymore.

I wonder who was her role model for being a mom.
Well, I think it’s really interesting about my parents, who both had been orphans, because ultimately they negotiated it extremely well for people who had been put down and marginalized. Mom was looking after her sisters and being very tough, but also very, very protective. I remember coming home and reporting, I think it was Grade One, at Mercy, that I got hit in the head with a marker by a teacher – In those days that was acceptable, a rap on your knuckles when you weren’t paying attention. And that was it. Mom was like, no. Mom went in just wild and said, I got struck in school and my kids will not be touched.

I’m smooshing together your projects; let’s differentiate a little. You got the play.
Right.

What’s happening with Showdown now?
Showdown is kind of on hold right now, because first I have Mummers, Mischief & Murder Part Two coming on the 1st of December. Part One sold out like in two weeks. I’m hoping to use any profits from the production to leverage a little bit of a slush fund to produce Showdown at the Majestic. Hopefully it will come together  in 2026; that’s my plan.

And The Girls of Belvedere is just published. How did you pitch Belvedere to Flankerr?
Well, I did the Pitch Wars with WritersNL. WritersNL are a fantastic. support, I attend every workshop I can get out to. The Pitch Wars is just fantastic. What a gift. To get in front of every publisher in Newfoundland.

And what did you say?
I said, this is the girls’ story. We have The Boys of  St Vincent’s, this is The Girls of Belvedere, this is their story, and it is time to tell that story. There have been news articles, of course, about some things that happened in Belvedere. But I mean, at the book signings, there are so many people who are happy in a weird way to see it in print and validated. You feel validated that it’s there and that it’s being put on paper. And there’s other people who can’t even look at the title.

Is the building still standing?
It caught fire and Mom and I went up after the fire, the next day. It was  kind of reassuring for her because this was its end, its true end.

Do you write one project at the time or do you go from project to project?
I go from project to project. But I can only get about three hours in the one session and then it kind of unravels for me. I take a walk so I can get refocused, especially if I have a deadline looming – and I usually give myself a deadline.

What’s happening with your film?
Raise Her Up? It’s a documentary, by myself and my partner, Bridget Ricketts, the story of Armine Nutting Gosling and the statue [commemorating women’s enfranchisement, which was unveiled in Bannerman Park June 18]. We’ve been watching the artist work, Sheila Coultas, and it’s been a privilege and very impressive to watch every stage from the maquette to the final finishing.

So what is the next year look like for you? What are you getting done?
I’m working on book two. It’s very  loosely based on Dad’s story. Because like I said, I think this is a very unique situation with two orphans coming together and getting married and having children and creating a family of their own. And they did it. Dad was raised totally in the outport. But still, once again it’s about women.
it’s the struggle of the women and how women help other women in all these small ways, help each other have some agency in a difficult life and how they bring each other up. You know, Mom had a real good friend, Maureen, who lived two doors down and when we were all little kids, and she would say, Marian, I’ll show you how to do that. Helping her learn how to put diapers on. Make bread. Normally there would have been lots of women in her life to show all these things, but when you were raised in an institution, you don’t get that. So she learned lots of great nurturing from Maureen and other women  – but she never did learn to cook very well. [laughs]