Bianca Marais
Bianca Marais is the author of two novels, Hum If You Don’t Know the Words and If You Want to Make God Laugh. She holds a Certificate in Creative Writing from the University of Torontos School of Continuing Studies where she now teaches creative writing. Before becoming an author, she started a corporate training company and volunteered with Cotlands, where she assisted care workers in Soweto with providing aid for HIV/AIDS orphans and their caregivers. She champions the Own Voices movement in her country of birth, South Africa, where she runs various programs through the Eunice Ngogodo Own Voices Initiative to encourage and empower women of colour to tell their own stories. She resides in Toronto with her husband (Stephen), her golden retriever (Muggle) and her cat (Wombat).
Twitter: @BiancaM_author
Instagram: @biancamarais_author
Not all books are for all readers… when you start a book and you just don’t like it, how long do you read until you bail?
I used to struggle with giving up on books, mostly because I used to buy all of my books since the library system in South Africa wasn’t great. But now my TBR pile threatens to topple over and suffocate me in my sleep, so I’m much more inclined to chuck a book and yell, “Next!”. PC (pre-COVID-19), I’d give a book about 40 pages before bailing. PC (Oh crap, I did not think this through: post-COVID-19 is the same damn contraction! Never mind, you know what I mean!), I give a book a few pages. Having said that, I often do come back to books that I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind for at the time and end up loving them later.
Is there another profession you would like to try?
Thousands! But this is the joy of being a writer. It’s kind of like being an actor in that you get to vicariously live dozens of other lives. I’d love to be a painter (but I have no artistic ability beyond writing). I’d love to be a singer (but I tend to clear out karaoke bars). I think I’d be a pretty good profiler or criminologist, but only the exciting parts of that job like hunting down serial killers. Not the crappy parts like having to write a thesis, or doing research, or studying for decades, or anything like that. I think I’d make a wonderful bookstore owner.
Do you collect anything?
Tarot cards. Although I don’t really read them or use them. Where some people tend to buy fridge magnets when they visit a place, I like to go for the tarot cards. Having said that, I almost always end up giving them away, so I guess that makes me a pretty shitty collector.
What do you worry about?
What don’t I worry about? I can stay up all night obsessing about some throwaway line I made at a dinner party, worrying if I offended someone when I was trying to lighten the mood. I worry about Syria; and animals who are losing their natural habitats; and the sick squirrel I saw in the park; and my elderly neighbour who shouldn’t be living alone, but doesn’t have any family to take care of her; whether I’ll ever sell another novel; and how I really should exercise more, and that I’m missing out on so much living on the opposite side of the world to my family.
Generally, you’ll know what I’m worrying about the most by what I’m championing at that particular time as I like to direct my worry into action. Right now, it’s this: Aid for Vulnerable Communities in South Africa
Do you speak a second language? Do you think differently in that language? Does it influence your writing?
I speak Afrikaans which is a West Germanic language that’s pretty much only spoken in South Africa. It evolved from Dutch. I swear a lot in that language, both in my thoughts and out loud. I used to gossip with my husband in public in that language too until I realized how many South Africans are in Toronto. My two novels are based in South Africa and so Afrikaans appears in both. I really want to learn Spanish though – watch this space!
