Stella Atlantis

The team at Wolsak and Wynn – Noelle Allen, Paul Vermeersch, Ashley Hisson, Jennifer Rawlinson – thank you. Added to your usual burden of acquisitions, editing, deadlines, sales, publicity was the viral pandemic of COVID-19. You handled the reshuffling with grace, and with dedication to books and publishing. How lucky I am to have such a solid work foundation in hard times. My hands-on editor, Paul Vermeersch, el maestro. From the inspirational power of the desert in my previous novel, Death Valley, to the healing power of water – blue mind – in Stella Atlantis, Paul has been a wonderful eye and ear, as we hiked and sailed the manuscripts into being. Facts. In Stella Atlantis, the fictional characters move in and out of real public events. Assassinations, terror attacks, anti-government demonstrations. I have kept the actual dates of these events, except for one: The October 2017 referendum for Catalan independence. In the book it takes place a year earlier, in 2016, to fit the rhythm of the story. In chapter 3, the phrase “waste and softness” is a direct quote from Robert Rauschenberg about making art using materials at hand. Tadoussac. The Quebec fishing village, home to whales. Where the Saguenay River joins the St. Lawrence. From 1985 on, the Glassco family – first Bill, then later Rufus and Dinora and their children – welcomed my husband, Dennis, and me to their summer home; it’s where Dennis asked me to marry him. Without their friendship and hospitality, and the years of long dinners and conversation, parts of Stella Atlantis would not exist. Queridísimo D. My husband of thirty-five years, Dennis. My best friend. Sweetheart, without you … you inhabit the music, you know the duende, you are the soul of the man who hears the wrist singing, who lives in the line. While the noise goes on all around us, you are the signal. To the readers. I acknowledge you with great thanks. I write for you. And to the dead. May your memory be a blessing. With the dead we can float. Susan Perly is the author of Death Valley, longlisted in 2016 for the prestigious Scotiabank Giller Prize, and Love Street, told in the voice of late-night DJ Miss Mercy. Her memoir on art and marriage, “Picasso’s Pigeons,” set in Barcelona, appeared in Zone 3 in 2013. A former journalist and radio producer, she broadcast eyewitness reports from Guatemala, El Salvador and Argentina during the Dirty War, and from Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq War. Susan Perly lives in her hometown Toronto with her husband, poet Dennis Lee.