Shelf Unbound magazine discussed the book Annabel by Kathleen Winter in an hour-long Twitter conversation. Following is the edited transcript.

Shelf Unbound: Hello, Kathleen. As a brief introduction, Annabel, your first novel, was a best-seller in Canada, a finalist for the Giller prize … Annabel won the GLBTQ Indie Lit Award and has just been named a finalist for Amazon.ca’s First Novel Award. Annabel is the story of an intersex baby born in Labrador in 1968. Kathleen, how did the idea for this story come to you?

Kathleen Winter: An acquaintance told me in my kitchen about an intersex child. I’d never heard of this, and did some research. … I gradually found out many, many children are born with ambiguous gender, and I wanted to write about this.

@katyvance: Hi Kathleen! I read your book Annabel and loved it! Your portrait of Atlantic Canada was accurate without diminishing
through stereotypes.

KW: Thanks — I drew the place from experience.

Shelf: Would you give us a brief description of the four main characters?

KW: Wayne/Annabel is the intersex child. Treadway is his hunter/trapper dad, well-meaning and loving, but traditional. Jacinta is Wayne’s mother — a dreamer, a city girl trapped in the wilderness. Thomasina is Wayne’s midwife, mentor, strong woman role.

Shelf: And the setting could be called a character as well. Describe Labrador and why you chose it.

KW: Labrador is magnetic, northern wilderness: alluring and brutal, mystical and merciless.

Shelf: I also want to interject that Annabel was just published in the US by Grove Atlantic.

KW: Yes, and in March it comes out with Jonathan Cape in the UK. Also being widely translated, including into Chinese.

Shelf: In the prologue you describe a white caribou who has left its herd. “Why would any of us break from the herd?” This sets up a major theme of the novel, the many ways people can be isolated. Do you see Wayne as the MOST isolated character in the book?

KW: I love this question about Wayne’s isolation. I see his isolation as having an end, as he connects with the world. I see his mother as being perhaps the most isolated in the book, because she loses so much and can’t confide. Jacinta is cut off from any truth, or friend, or solace that might have nourished her.

Shelf: Yes, I actually think that his father, Treadway, is the most isolated. You render him quite beautifully. He does harsh things but in private reveals uncertainty. In the woods he sees a vision of his daughter and loves her. Was it hard to find his tenderness?

KW: I didn’t know his tenderness existed before I wrote the book. He showed it to me himself. I waited and he showed me. That’s how I do a lot of writing, by waiting to see what would really happen, not what I think SHOULD happen.

Shelf: The mother, Jacinta, refers to the baby as a girl at the doctor’s. Does she always think of Wayne as a girl?

KW: Yes, Jacinta always sees the girl, Annabel. She sees Wayne as well, but she secretly and longingly sees her daughter.

Shelf: Do you think it could be argued that Treadway’s decision was not entirely wrong? Would Wayne have struggled equally raised as a girl?

KW: For me, the other choices include raising the child as ambiguous, without denying the male or female aspect, so to answer your question, I don’t think it would have been any easier to deny the Wayne side of Wayne and honour only Annable.

@nikgore: I was curious about why you didn’t give W&J more time together after he chose to embrace the female side?

KW: Wayne and Wally maybe? Yes, I know what you mean — it would have been great to continue to find out more about Annabel. … Part of the answer might be that the book was already 460 pages long!

Shelf: You mention waiting to see what WOULD happen in your stories … what else in the book came to you from waiting?

KW: Bridges. The bridge used to be a treehouse but I didn’t like it. I waited and waited, and one day bridges floated to me. Also the ending — that was the hardest part and I had to rewrite the final third of the book many, many times.

Shelf: Brilliant. I was particularly struck by the bridges metaphor when I re-read the book. It is subtle but powerful. All of the characters seem to be attempting to bridge two worlds or wishing they were in another world. Thomasina, the mother’s friend who witnesses the birth, seems to most successfully break out of her restriction. Tell us more about her.

KW: Thank you — I love it too — I thank the fiction gods for that idea. … Thomasina is the strong one because she sees nothing wrong with blunt truth. She’s wise and strong, though wounded.

Shelf: The story takes place in 1968. Why did you set it then, and would it play out the same today?

KW: I thought Medicine would have been less evolved then, but in fact the same brutal choices are made today.

@katyvance Maybe it is obvious, but what do you think Wayne’s parents should have done?

KW: I think they did the best they could. The question the book asks is, why isn’t it okay to be gender-ambiguous? I think it is okay.

Shelf: Isolation is a big theme. The place is isolated, the characters are isolated from one another. Did you intend that at the start?

KW: My fave author is E.M. Forster, who wrote “only connect.” Isolation is a huge theme for me, yes. My whole aim of writing is, I sometimes think, to ward off loneliness. … I mean my own loneliness, the loneliness of the people in my novel or stories, and the loneliness of being human.

Shelf: I’ve asked @unputdwnables to join us and tell about Annabel winning an Indie Lit Award.

@unputdwnables Annabel won the Indie Lit Award in the GLBTQ category. The @IndieLitAwards are run by book bloggers. … Annabel was nominated by book bloggers as the best GLBTQ book of 2010. It then made the shortlist in December and was announced as the winner this month. Kathleen just granted us an interview which is now on the site.

@bonjourcass The panel raved about her stirring descriptions of the Canadian wilderness and her representation of an often ignored community.

Shelf: You mentioned struggling with the ending. How did you settle on this particular one? What alternatives did you consider?

KW: God, the possible endings! Treadway wreaks revenge on Derek Warford. Jacinta ends up in the mental hospital. Wayne and Wally become lovers. Wayne marries Graycie Watts. Wayne stays in Labrador and becomes an outfitter. I could go on all night with possible endings.

@katyvance I was glad that Treadway considered revenge and equally glad he didn’t take it.

Shelf: So it sounds like you wanted to give Wayne happiness.

KW: I HAD to give Wayne a chance of happiness because the real lives of intersex people contain so much trauma. I couldn’t bear to write a novel without some hope for Wayne/Annabel. Not a happy ending, but one with a hope of connection.

Shelf: Well that is a good point: hope of connection. Because as you say on page 1, “Break apart, separate, these are hard words.”

Shelf: I think that frequently stories about GLBTQ people do not give the characters happy endings. As a gay person, I liked seeing that.

KW: I’m so glad to hear that as a gay reader you wanted a hopeful ending. I think there’s too much literary despair.

@thatneilguy Did you have an easy road to publication?

KW: No, the road to publication was long!!! It took loads of persistence. Many many rejections, but I used them to improve my work, constantly improve it by rewriting and studying writers I loved and respected.

Shelf: Well now I must ask: you’ve mentioned EM Forster… what other writers do you most love and respect?

KW: Heinrich Boll, Colm Toibin, Katherine Mansfield, Gretel Erlich.

@thatneilguy: do you think you had extra stumbling blocks because of your subject matter?

KW: I’m not sure I had extra stumbling blocks — usually I don’t notice stumbling blocks even when they trip me!

@debdak143 I just started reading Annabel and i can visualize the setting so well. Loving it so far. Thanks.

KW: Very glad you like the setting — it is drawn from observation and experience. Labrador is a powerful land.

@nikgore I assumed Wally was gay. But I guess that works in the end doesn’t it? I’m so glad Wayne left Graycie. … I imagine the rape was hard to write. You did a great job depicting the brutality.

KW: Yes, I’m glad Wayne left Graycie too. As for Wally being gay, I like that assumption! … I almost took [the rape] scene out — it was too brutal for me and I was shocked that I wrote it, but I began to realize people in Wayne/Annabel’s position are often raped, beaten and murdered. So I left it in.

Shelf: Kathleen, this has been a fantastic hour. I want to wrap up by asking what you’re working on now?

KW: I’ve nearly finished a murder mystery and am doing preliminary reading for a nonfiction work about the Arctic.