by Joshua Knelman

Some things hadn’t changed. We were still trying to carve out lives as writers, still meeting every once in awhile at a bar to raise a glass and talk shop. His publisher these days is Random House Canada, but I have the honour of being his first, in Headlight.

I met Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall more than a decade ago at Concordia’s Creative Writing program. Back then Shaughnessy studied martial arts and wore a white-tank top to class some days. He had edge, and a boyish smile to soften it. That was 1998, before most students had cell phones. I didn’t have an email account. Every week we met in small workshops, praising and trashing our early efforts at writing. There was always a group within the group, and they gathered to do more praising and trashing at the bar.

When we met, Shaughnessy was working on a novel called Prowling Room. It is a great title, so it got stuck in my mind. He never published it. There were many short stories, novels, and poems written by students I met, works that never saw the eyes of an editor or the inside of a bookstore.

The first edition of Headlight had an editorial board of 7 students, an advisory professor—Terence Byrnes—and showcased the work of 20 writers at Concordia. At that time, there was no anthology that published the work of students at Canada’s most celebrated creative writing program. We printed up posters with a call for submissions and plastered them around the English Department, not knowing if anyone would send anything in. We didn’t even have money to print a book, although a few grant applications were pending. Later, we received a grand total of $4,000 from the Student Union, the Alumni Association, the English Department, and the Dean of Students. By then the little box in the English Department had started to fill up. It was exciting to us. We argued about what was bad and what was good, like real editors.

The editorial board came to blows over one short story, because it featured teenage boys at a strip club. Was Headlight saying it was a good idea to go to a strip club? Did the story glorify strippers? This was a tense debate that lasted for two hours. We took a vote: 3 editors against, 4 editors in favour. The story was published. It was called “Three Songs Long,” written by Jonathan Goldstein.

Recently Jonathan published a book of short stories to much acclaim, called Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bible! I tried to attend his book launch but was turned away at the door. It was over-capacity.

Jonathan isn’t the only creative writing student from those first few anthologies to publish. Others followed, including Ibi Kaslik, whose first novel, Skinny, garnered much praise. Her second novel, The Angel Riots, was nominated for Ontario’s Trillium Award in 2009. For most of these writers, Headlight was the first experience of being published. The anthology didn’t make them famous or rich, but maybe having their work hand-picked by editors and frozen on a page for all to read made the experience of writing more real to them.

The introduction to the first edition was written by Carmine Starnino, a graduate of Creative Writing. I heard Carmine before I met him. He came to our poetry workshop and read. I remember thinking: wow, this man is a beautiful poet. Carmine wrote an eloquent, sparse introduction in 1998, for free. We were thrilled.

This past fall Carmine came to Toronto to launch his new book This Way Out. Later, we walked up Yonge Street together. He was pushing his son in a stroller. Carmine has large, almost-black eyes, and they reflected the sprawl of glowing billboards above us. I asked him, “When you spend all this time writing and are paid little to do it, do you feel like it’s worth it?” Carmine smiled. “Sometimes I have to remind myself. I guess the truth is that I don’t think I could stop.”

A few months later Shaughnessy and I raised a glass. He wears a beard now, but he still possesses the boyish smile. After graduating from Concordia in 2000, he’d moved to Toronto and written a non-fiction book about living in a homeless settlement on the edge of the city: Down To This. It was two years of work, and received strong reviews. Then he began writing something he’d wanted to do since we’d met: a novel. He started in 2005. It took him 5 years to finish. Ghosted is due out around the same time as this anthology, and has been picked up by a publisher in the US.

Headlight was born out of a desire to help talented young writers be acknowledged as professionals, worthy of being published and praised for their craft. To all the writers featured in this edition of Headlight, number 13, I give a steep bow.

Source: Headlight Anthology, no. 13, 2010, pp. 7–8.