The 2022 peer assessment committee says:

"A timely novel that flows from the author’s Métis and Canadian roots, The Summer of Bitter and Sweet features vibrant prose, real family conflict and a raw and evocative commentary on the struggles of being different in a small-town, prairie setting. Touching on subjects that speak to today’s challenges for 2SLGBTQI+ youth, the complex story delivers an emotional impact. The recipe notes about ice cream add a scoop of sweetness to level out Lou’s sometimes bitter realities.”

Jen Ferguson (she/her) is a writer of fiction, essays and poems, an editor and a teacher. She is Michif/Métis and white, an activist, an intersectional feminist, an auntie, and an accomplice armed with a PhD in English and creative writing. Her first book for adults, Border Markers, was published by NeWest Press in 2016. Her novella, “Missing,” won The Malahat Review’s 2022 Novella Prize and her essay, “Off Balance,” was selected for the Best Canadian Essays 2020. Jen Ferguson lives and works in Cedar Rapids, USA.

**

Imagine you could spend a day with any author, living or dead. Who would you choose, what would you do, and what would you talk about?

Some of my best conversations have happened hiking or canoeing in the backcountry. So the where is the easiest part of this. The where also adequately addresses the what. If you need me to get more specific, we are somewhere in the backcountry of Algonquin Provincial Park, there is a canoe in the picture, but it might be off to the side and we’re resting on hammocks we’ve hung between sturdy trees after a long day.

While the what and the where are solid in my mind, the who remains in the shadows, just beyond where the clearing in the trees ends. In that way you have asked me an impossible question.

What advice would you give your ten-year-old self about the future?

You’re going to start reading one summer at Girl Guide camp because you’re bored and a friend loans you a book. This will change your life. You’re going to struggle with not understanding why in a few short years you won’t crush on boys (or girls) the way your friends do. But you’ll take your own path, and when you’re grown, you’ll write the stories you needed then so other teens have stories as guides now. Do not, I repeat, do not read Anne Rampling’s Belinda one middle school summer during a Toronto heatwave. Nothing good comes from that. But read all the other books. Start reading books by Native authors sooner. Don’t be so afraid. There is power in vulnerability. Maybe go away for university because your little sister playing her drum kit in the room above your bedroom while you try to study is challenging. All of this, but also—yes there is a but as there must be in any advice concerning the future—even though we are the kind of person who can learn from stories, without having to make the mistake ourselves first, so much of this advice will strip away the things that will shape us, even that cursed Anne Rampling book.

So I’ll try again: Start reading books by Native authors sooner, be vulnerable and harness your power, and lastly, gather joy and learn to hold it close to you, learn how to sew it into the seams of your heart, your liver, your stomach because whatever happens, whatever you will find in your future, you will need joy—we all need joy to keep going. And like anything else, gathering joy and learning how to hold onto it in real ways, in the ways that spark, takes deep practice, requires effort, requires thought and intention. You are not flawed because it does not come easy to you.

Your book The Summer of Bitter and Sweet tells the story of Lou, and is described as "a powerful story about rage, secrets, and all the spectrums that make up a person." What did you learn as you brought Lou’s character to life?

I suppose I knew this in my back-brain before I wrote the book but writing Lou brought this realization to the forefront where it could do some good.

Teenagers are messy and writing that messy, showing it, being okay in that space is a real and important and hard, radical thing.

And if that seemed to relieve you, dear reader, of your own messiness, let us back track a step. It is not only teenagers. We humans are messy. We make mistakes. We sometimes make the same mistake several wearying times. We forget how to lean on other people and how to let them lean back against us without toppling over. We forget it’s easier to fight systematic injustices together.

Writing Lou’s story reminded me of all this. It’s incredibly timely.

In an alternate life, who would you be if you were not a writer?

Maybe I should tell you that during undergrad I made a list of all the possible careers I could imagine and discovered I was suited to only two of them, which I then pursued and now do rather well, rather happily.

I should also tell you that this question gave me a lot of anxiety. I wanted to do well on it, especially after fumbling question number one!

Which might reveal the kind of person I am.

So yeah, now that I’ve thought about it more, Alternate Universe Jen would probably be a chef. That seems to fit. I identify with Sydney on The Bear in an over-achiever who is obsessed with a thing and makes the thing her life kind of way. Also, the ice cream in The Summer of Bitter and Sweet might be an indicator. And the pizza shop in my next YA book out with Heartdrum in Fall 2023, Those Pink Mountain Nights, is also a rather loud sign.

What can I say: I like good food; I like feeding people—but you should know, I really hate doing the dishes.

What was the last book by a Canadian author that changed you in some way?

Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves.

Every time I read it, every time I teach it, It continues to change me.

**

Excerpt from The Summer of Bitter and Sweet

We’re a sight. Three pickup trucks traveling down the highway, each with one of the Creamery’s picnic tables hanging over the tailgate. And me, in the lead, in my old bronze F-150, my best friend, Florence, laughing from her shotgun seat. Summer arrives to the prairies slow—and stays for such a short time. But Florence and me, we’re tough enough. We’ve wound down the windows all the way, because it’s tradition.

Last year this time, we were so giddy for summer, for freedom. Florence is trying to bring us back to that place. Her red hair whips around the cab like a storm. It tickles my arm, my cheek. We’re singing along to the radio—bad country music because, again, it’s tradition. If doing something two years running makes for tradition. But it’s not the trucks and Florence’s wild hair causing us to stand out on Highway 16. It’s one of the cattle dogs, with his orange-and-white coat, riding atop the picnic table I’m hauling like he’s surfing. Homer’s a character—an old man with the heart of a young pup. He’s the star of cleanup day.

It’s not the best day of the season. It’s not the worst. But it’s certainly a show.

When we approach the turn into the shack’s lot, I slow down carefully, watching Homer’s dog-smile out the rearview to be sure he’s ready for this. It’s a balance, and keeping the balance is my job. Homer trusts me. We pull into the clearing, where the shack has sat all winter, and before I can park, an orange-and-white blur jumps off the truck, kissing the land with a little thud. He settles in for the day, in the shade against a stand of trees, where he’ll watch us, like he watches the cows. Coyotes, bears, and other predators don’t get too close, not with Homer standing guard.

As we wait for my uncle Dom and my mom to arrive, Florence examines her freshly painted nails, all red like blood. She’s decked head to toe in black. Her skinny jeans are artfully ripped at the knees and across one thigh. We’re giggling over the song lyrics pouring out of my speakers—trucks, girls, and ice-cold beers, like that’s all there is to life—when Dom raps on the side of the truck and says, “Let’s get started!”

“Loading the picnic tables and the paint and all these supplies wasn’t part of the job?” I ask, climbing down.

Throwing his head back so his gorgeous brown hair flutters, Dom grins.

Once we unload the picnic tables, my mom lugs her massive beading kit from her truck. She’s brought the portable stadium seat along—the one she drags to the pool when she watches me swim. She’s here to keep us company, not to work. Last week, she quit her hellish job at the 911 dispatch to dedicate herself to art. She spent the first fall we lived here learning the craft. Her fingers bled first, then callused over. Now, she beads while she watches TV, beads while she eats.

If she could, she’d do it in her sleep.

She’s leaving me, leaving us for the summer. But she’s here today. Teasing and cackling at me, or her brother, with entire lungfuls of air.

No one asks where Wyatt, my boyfriend, is this morning. And I’m glad for that. Glad too, in a strange way, he hasn’t shown. As we paint boards with a new layer of whitewash, Florence squeals with delight when drips stain her jeans. In September, she’ll wear these on her round-the-world trip, and people will think they’re designer. We’ve already cleared the mousetraps and removed any spiders who’ve taken up residence by relocating them to the bush.
Next weekend, we open.