The MacEwan Book of the Year is a staple in classrooms across programs and departments throughout the Fall and Winter terms. This year, it also spanned nearly a decade of MacEwan Writers in Residence. Girlfriend on Mars author Deborah Willis, who was the 2017 Writer in Residence, was interviewed by current Writer in Residence Jenna Butler at a March 21 event that marked the end of Willis’ time on campus.

Willis started the event with a reading from the novel before Butler moderated a Q+A with the author. Despite the gap between each of their tenures on campus, the two writers aren’t strangers.

“We really got to know one another online via social media, talking about our activism during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Butler, who is both a former MacEwan student and taught creative writing here on campus, explains. 

The topic is prevalent in the novel, and Willis says that the writing process inspired her own journey into navigating the balance between performative and effective activism. The book takes on a variety of topical issues, from consumerism to religion to climate change.

But content wasn’t the only part of the writing process that Willis had to learn more about with Girlfriend on Mars. Her shift from shorter formats to penning a full-length novel was something that she initially struggled with.

“When I first started to try to write novels, I thought they were just long short stories,” says Willis. “I couldn’t figure out why everything kept sputtering out until I was here at MacEwan and talking to Jackie Baker about screenplays.” 

Those conversations with Baker, an associate professor of English, led Willis to adopt the structure of a screenplay for her work, which lent itself well to the book’s storyline around a reality TV show. But even though screenplays and novels are very different ways to tell stories, Willis notes that there is an important similarity.

“Every story is built of scenes, so there was overlap,” she says. “But it wasn’t until I started studying film structure that somehow, subliminally, I got a better idea of the longer form.”

After a couple of failed attempts at novels, that research resulted in Girlfriend on Mars being longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and being a finalist for the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour. And here at MacEwan, it’s generated some incredible outputs from classrooms across departments – from papers to board games to redesigned book covers.

Though Willis’ time on campus has come to an end, those creative reactions to her novel aren’t fading away just yet. Students are invited to submit their work to the annual Book of the Year student contest, where up to four winners receive a $750 award toward their future tuition.

Full contest rules and entry categories can be found here, and applications are open until April 30.