Cendrine Marrouat: How have people reacted to the book, so far?

Andre Gerard: The response has been terrific. Readers love the selections. They love the quality of the pieces. They love discovering great writers, writers they may have heard about but have never taken the time to explore. Take, for instance, Saul Bellow, Winston Churchill, Seamus Heaney, Doris Lessing and Derek Walcott. All five are Nobel laureates, and Fathers offers a chance to sample some of their best writing and then perhaps go on to read more.

Cendrine Marrouat: Would you share a short extract from "Fathers: A Literary Anthology"?

Andre Gerard: Copyright reasons prevent me from sharing some of my favourite pieces, pieces such as Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays” or an excerpt from Philip Roth’s Patrimony.  I could, I suppose, share my own poem, “Sauvez Vous, Les Enfants!” but I don’t want to abstract the poem from its context in the anthology. What I’ll do is to share a couple of paragraphs from my introduction, paragraphs which discuss the history of the father genre.

Today, I am pleased to feature Andre Gerard. This tutor has recently become an editor and publisher, and released his debut anthology. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.  

Cendrine Marrouat: Hello Andre, thank you for answering my questions. First, tell us a little more about you. 

Andre Gerard: I was born in Vancouver and raised in Powell River, British Columbia. I have an MA in English Literature from the University of Washington and over twenty-five years of private tutoring experience in Vancouver, British Columbia.

About 80 percent of people scan the first page of an article before deciding if they are going to read it or not. People have busy lives. So, good content is essential to entice the reader’s mind.

It is important to observe specific writing styles and understand what makes them effective and attractive to so many readers. Major writers – whether they are novelists, poets, bloggers or journalists –share the same great feature. They awake certain feelings in their readers. In other words, the content that they provide answers specific questions people have.

So, what exactly is good content?