Campbell, Sandra 1946-

views updated

CAMPBELL, Sandra 1946-

(Sandra C. Budden)

PERSONAL:

Born March 12, 1946, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; daughter of Charles Campbell and Joan Frances (Parmenter) Radcliff; married John A. M. Budden, January 23, 1966 (divorced, March, 1984); children: Amy Margaret, Ross. Ethnicity: "Irish-Scottish." Education: University of Toronto, B.A. (with honors), 1969, M.Ed., 1980. Hobbies and other interests: Music, adventure travel, gardening.

ADDRESSES:

Home—45 Helena Ave., Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6G 2H3. Office—36 Madison Ave., Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5R 2S1. Agent—Wanda Buchanan, 178 Oakcrest, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4C 1C2. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Humber College, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, teacher of "understanding learning and enchantment" and instructional design, 1979-83; TV Ontario, Toronto, senior researcher, 1983-90; Viva Associates (consultants in education), Toronto, president, 1990-97; writer, 1997—.

MEMBER:

ESPRIT, Associates in Psycho-Spiritual Education.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Grants from Ontario Ministry of Education.

WRITINGS:

(Under name Sandra C. Budden) Movable Airport: A Case Study in Community Action, A. M. Hakkert (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1973.

(And director) The Spiral Garden: An Innovation in Rehabilitation (videotape script), Hugh MacMillan Rehabilitation Centre (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1994.

Getting to Normal (novel), Stoddart Publishing (Don Mills, Ontario, Canada), 2001.

A Due: A Memoir, 2003.

Author of instructional materials for students, parents, teachers, and educational administrators. Work represented in anthologies, including Transforming a Rape Culture, Milkweed Editions (Minneapolis, MN), 1993. Contributor of fiction, essays, and reviews to periodicals, including Citizen's Weekly, Why, and ACTRA-Scope.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

Seeds on the Margin: Artistry at Work, about Canadian community-arts projects; research on the role of therapeutic clowns as healing agents in hospitals.

SIDELIGHTS:

Sandra Campbell told CA: "The catalyst for my writing is my burning desire to understand from the inside out what it means to be fully alive and human. I write to explore how we navigate the huge ache caused by the limits of our bodies and minds and our finite time on this earth. I write to explore how we live in relationship to ourselves, others, and the earth without doing damage.

"While curiosity is my catalyst for writing a story, the response of readers to my stories makes my work meaningful, and this is also a prime motivator. I'm delighted when readers write that they saw themselves in a particular character or situation in ways that enabled some new insight into their life situation. Then I know that as a writer I've danced with my reader and together we've co-created a new story, one that reflects the reader's subjective reality as well as mine.

"I'm a voracious reader. I'm informed and inspired by many fine literary writers. Several late-twentieth-century writers who've influenced me are Margaret Laurence (The Stone Angel and The Diviners), Timothy Findlay (The Wars), Carol Sheilds (The Stone Diaries and Unless), Alice Walker, Carolyn Heilbrun, and Cynthia Ozick. My work is also inspired by visual art. My early education was as an art historian, and I still often look to visual art for narrative inspiration and for new insights into the human condition. I enjoy all visual expression, from folk art to Rubens to Picasso.

"I write from my experience of living and studying. Words are my tools, the paints with which I create my tableau. Memory as it lives in me in the moment is the well from which I draw. As long as I stay vulnerable to the feelings that these memories stir, it offers me all I need.

"I write fiction on the cusp of knowing and begin with imagining 'what if.' Then I engage a process of watching and waiting, trying to let go as much as possible of predetermined outcomes. Daily yoga, meditation, and long, aimless walks assist this process enormously. When I'm able to write in this way, the characters and situations emerge and tell their stories in ways that are experienced in the mind and body of the reader as well. I find this process magical, because it's beyond reason.

"When writing my first draft, I try to step aside and let all the words and ideas come forth without editing or censoring. Then I try to let the work leave my consciousness so that, when I reconnect with it, I'll do so with fresh eyes. For me the first draft is the raw material from which I'll craft the story. Writing is rewriting, and I really love its process. I love playing with words and sentences to make them just right.

"My first novel, Getting to Normal, explores illness, health, and healing. I chose to do this through the eyes of seven-year-old Alice, the protagonist. My interest in illness and health stems from my own experiences with a life-threatening illness as an adult. This event changed my life and was grist for the new novel. Alice is confined to pediatric isolation because of her mysterious headaches and her acute withdrawal. The story unfolds as Alice is helped to make her slow journey out of isolation through a variety of relationships. Alice's point of view is amplified by ongoing "Medical Notes," the daily notes of her physicians and nurses who offer an entirely different perspective on what's wrong with Alice. Readers respond that they've seen themselves in the story and as a result gained some new awareness of their own life journeys.

" A Due: A Memoir tells the story of my sister and me. Three weeks before she died, we went to New York to see her favorite opera, Der Rosenkavalier, at Lincoln Center and her favorite paintings at the Metropolitan Museum. The story of our four days together is the springboard to explore blood, belonging and rupture, the arts, the imagination, and transformation.

" Seeds on the Margin: Artistry at Work profiles in text and photographs six innovative Canadian community arts projects which work with people living on the margin: street youth, children with disabilities, the infirm, the elderly. These projects demonstrate how the imagination can be our greatest asset in solving problems of social change and dislocation. In telling the story of each project and its participants, I explore how creativity is not just about producing objects, but also about listening to our own unique stories and birthing them in ways that reflect who we really are. In this way all people, regardless of life circumstance, can become authors of their own lives, creators of culture."