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June 21, 2013
Early hints of success
Mark Leiren-Young’s new memoir is revealing.
MICHELLE DODEK
In the performing arts, someone known as a “triple threat” sings, dances and acts. For someone who writes novels, plays, comedy for TV, screenplays, is a filmmaker and a journalist, there may not be a specific term to encompass it all, but there is a name: Mark Leiren-Young.
This Vancouver-raised bestselling author won the Stephen Leacock medal for humor in 2009 for his first memoir, the very funny Never Shoot a Stampede Queen, which recounts his days working as a young journalist in Williams Lake, B.C.
In the last few months, Leiren-Young has again been flexing his literary muscles, publishing another humorous coming-of-age story, Free Magic Secrets Revealed: A Memoir (Harbor Publishing, 2013). Not shy of hard work, Leiren-Young was simultaneously working on an eponymously titled play based on Never Shoot a Stampede Queen. Not only did this one-man show come out at the same time as his new novel, but Leiren-Young stacked the decks by having the Kamloops and Duncan productions of the play overlap by two days. When asked about his intense schedule over the past several months, Leiren-Young told the Independent that he is happy to report that he is also busy working on more than one screenplay, as well as a documentary film. Oh, and these days he writes twice a week for the Vancouver Sun and regularly for the Georgia Strait, too.
Although he is busy working on numerous and diverse projects and continues to expand his literary career, Leiren-Young said that he fondly remembers when he had is first articles published in the Globe and Mail and was starting to write regularly for TV. At the time, his grandfather, Ben Wosk, wasn’t impressed by his grandson’s fledgling success.
“Zaida Ben would ask me when I was going to write something in an important newspaper. He didn’t think I was a real writer unless it was published in the Jewish Western Bulletin,” laughed Leiren-Young. He’s sure that his grandfather would have been proud to see his grandson’s numerous successes written up in the JWB’s successor, the Jewish Independent.
His zaida also would have kvelled knowing that Leiren-Young has been collaborating with his first cousin, Tony Wosk, who works as director of acquisitions and distributions for Toronto-based Berkshire Axis Media, a Canadian production company.
Leiren-Young’s close connections with his family is one of the themes in his new novel, Free Magic Secrets Revealed. A look into his formative teen years, readers are treated to an engaging picture of who Leiren-Young was as a young man and how he became the eclectic, energetic and funny author that he is today.
“It’s a book about coming of age in Vancouver with a special resonance for people who grew up Jewish here,” Leiren-Young said. In fact, references to Vancouver Talmud Torah and the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver are important to the story. “Being in the preschool [at the JCCGV] surrounded by toys, doing a show about demons … comedically it was perfect,” he mused, slyly alluding to the book’s content.
“Free Magic Secrets Revealed is like a prequel to Never Shoot a Stampede Queen,” Leiren-Young explained of the memoir, which explores a slice of local 1970s culture. His voice comes through as witty, nerdy and loveable, and his recollections of life’s events all the way up to the time that he was producing his first work for the stage are thrilling, sometimes unbelievable, and even exasperating, at times.
Having just finished up with the Stampede Queen theatre productions, Leiren-Young is looking forward to turning the book into a screenplay. “A play is about dialogue and character. In a book, you have to show the world of the story, and a screenplay is between the two,” he explained about how the media differ.
With a degree in theatre and creative writing, Leiren-Young knew from a young age that he was destined to be a writer. “Most people are more afraid of failure than I am,” he said. “I didn’t know if I would be able to pay the bills, but my Plan B was starve.”
Michelle Dodek is a freelance writer living in Vancouver.
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