ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, November 1, 1996 TAG: 9611010006
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: RADFORD
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
A New River Valley author who is a native of Canada has won a $1,000 literary award in that country for her autobiographical book, "That Shining Place."
Simone Poirier-Bures, who teaches writing part time at Virginia Tech and then goes home to practice it, was able to return to her home in Nova Scotia recently to receive the Evelyn Richardson Memorial Literary Prize, Atlantic Canada's most prestigious award for non-fiction.
"I knew that my book was a finalist," she said, but she doubted it would win because it dealt more with Greece than with Nova Scotia. It did touch on her growing up in Nova Scotia, though, which made it eligible for the award.
The book tells of how young Simone Poirier, after earning enough money as a waitress for the trip, sailed overseas to backpack across Europe. Her 21st birthday came during the voyage.
"I just had, I don't know where it came from, but a burning need to see the world," she said. "It was really like coming to terms with the ideals of your youth."
Inspired by passion and vitality of life depicted in the movie, "Zorba the Greek," and by the writing of Nikos Katzanzakis ("I want nothing, I fear nothing, I am free"), plus a desire to break from the materialism and privilege of her fellow students at a college outside Boston, she gravitated to the isle of Crete where an older woman named Maria took the young blond stranger under her wing.
"I never forgot her kindness. I never forgot her incredible appetite for life," Poirier-Bures said. They developed a unique bond and, 25 years later almost to the month, Poirier-Bures made a return trip with her husband (Allen Bures, chairman of Radford University's Managing and Marketing Department).
The book tells of those trips, moving back and forth in time. It keeps the reader in suspense as to whether the mature Poirier-Bures will find Maria again and what their new relationship might be. It also reflects the ways in which people and societies change with the experiences of 25 years.
As an unattached lone woman, the young Simone encountered a dark side of "That Shining Place." Some Greek authorities became suspicious of her independence, doubting that she could be supporting herself with a part-time English teaching job by living frugally. "I romanticized poverty, like many of us did," she said.
But both she and that culture had changed by the time she came back, and Poirier-Bures writes graphically of those changes. As the Evelyn Richardson Memorial Literary Trust said in its description of the book, "Poirier-Bures creates the most extraordinary layering of points of view. In a contrast of recollections, she achieves a profound sense of reconciliation."
Poirier-Bures made her first professional writing sale at age 16, being paid for a poem published locally in Nova Scotia. "But I didn't have another thing published until I was 30," she said.
She won some short-story contests and wrote a novel, never published, for which she is now thankful. However, her second novel, "Candyman," was published to some acclaim in 1994.
"Candyman" started out as nonfiction, detailing the early life of Poirier-Bures, the pain of her father's death, and the process of maturing. "That Shining Place" started out as a novel. They switched before they were published.
"'Candyman' started out as a memoir But it wasn't working as a memoir," she said. "So I made it into fiction." Her second book, she found, drew its power from the reality. Writing, she said, "seems to have its own form and you have to find it."
Poirier-Bures earned master's degrees in English from the University of New Brunswick and in creative writing from Hollins College, but it was not until she settled in Southwest Virginia that she also settled into a schedule of writing.
"I think it was where I consciously made time to do it, and gave myself a kind of regimen I learned how to discipline myself during those few years," she said.
She can be driving when she thinks of something that needs to go into a scene, and captures it immediately. "I write on anything. The backs of napkins - not often, but occasionally," she said.
"For some people, that need is there," she said. "And it's often very, very compelling. It comes to the point where you can't not do it, you know?"
Poirier-Bures will sign copies of her book from 3 to 5 p.m. Nov. 9 at Christiansburg's new Books-a-Million store at 2705 Market St. Other New River Valley writers scheduled to sign copies of their work during the store's opening days are Ed Falco, Katherine Soniat and Charles West.
LENGTH: Medium: 84 linesby CNB