Nii Parkes

Our class was fortunate enough to meet with Nii Parkes, author of Tail of the Blue Bird, a mystery novel which we finished about two weeks ago. His visit to our class was not so much a lecture as it was a Q&A session. I really liked how open he was to our questions and how friendly he was. He seemed to be a very genuine and knowledgeable man. Whether our questions were relating directly to the text or leaning more towards writing strategies, Parkes provided us with a long, anecdotal type of response. He had a special way of drawing us in while he was speaking--perhaps the reason that he is a great mystery writer.

I was actually a bit surprised when he told us his background is in science. He is an excellent writer and also creative writer, but he told us that his background actually lies more in maths and sciences. With that in mind, students began to question whether he was writing about himself (through Kayo) in the novel. He responded saying that in some ways, yes, but no, not entirely.

Parkes told us that he likes to hand-write his work before using a computer so that he can draw arrows and so nothing is finite. He had good advice for us as writers. He gave us an activity to do towards the end of the class in which we had to write through someone else's voice. This was a useful exercise because after finishing, we realized that it was actually quite hard to stay in character of someone else while preventing using your own voice.

I am grateful that our class got the opportunity to meet with ask Parkes so many questions.