Miriam Toews on The Flying Troutmans

This from Random House: "Miriam Toews…was born in 1964 in the small Mennonite town of Steinbach, Manitoba. She left at eighteen, living in Montreal and London and touring Europe before coming back to Manitoba, where she earned a B.A. in film studies at the University of Manitoba. Later she packed up with her children and partner and moved to Halifax to attend the University of King’s College, where she received a bachelor’s degree in journalism. Upon returning to Winnipeg with her family in 1991, she freelanced at the CBC, making radio documentaries. When her youngest daughter started nursery school, Toews decided it was time to try writing a novel." 

She’s written four to date, including A Complicated Kindness which won the GG’s Award for Best Fiction in 2004. We talk here about her latest The Flying Troutmans, about her father’s struggle with depression and the stigma that still surrounds mental illness, about road trips and siblings, the definition of love, the film Little Miss Sunshine, writing novels with movie deals in mind, trust, abandonment and Winnipeg, Manitoba.