Skip to main navigation menu Skip to main content Skip to site footer
##common.pageHeaderLogo.altText##

Interview

Volume 18, Number 2 (1993)

Nino Ricci: A Big Canvas

  • Mary Rimmer
Submitted
May 22, 2008
Published
1993-06-06

Abstract

Nino Ricci talks about Lives of the Saints, the first novel in his bildungsroman trilogy and cites Robinson Davies' Fifth Business and Alice Munro's Lives of Girls and Women as influences. He says that "The sense of being an outsider, or on the margins, is often how the artist is portrayed" and compares the artist's situation to that of an immigrant: outsiders are necessary in fiction to test the rules of the community. He also speaks about his experience in and the value of the creative writing program at Concordia University, his involvement with PEN International, and the problems of censorship in various countries. In a follow-up interview, critical responses to In a Glass House (the second novel in the trilogy), specifically concerning its apparent lack of structure, are discussed.