Writer Spotlight: Rose Sutherland

Rose Sutherland @rosesutherlandwrites is a Toronto-based writer who grew up a voracious reader with an overactive imagination in Nova Scotia (where she once fell off a roof trying to re-enact Anne of Green Gables!). She’s been to theatre school in NYC, apprenticed at a pâtisserie in rural France, and currently moonlights as an usher and bartender—in between writing queer folktales, practicing yoga, dancing, singing, searching out amazing coffee and croissants, and making niche jokes about Victor Hugo on the internet. She’s mildly obsessed with the idea of one day owning a large dog, several chickens, and maybe a goat. A Sweet Sting of Salt is her debut novel.

Keep reading for more about character arcs in A Sweet Sting of Salt, Rose’s favorite fanfic tropes, and some excellent reading recs 👀

Can you tell us about A Sweet Sting of Salt and how you came to write it?

A Sweet Sting of Salt is a queer (f/f) historical reimagining of the classic folktale of the selkie wife, set in 1830’s Nova Scotia. I call it a “reimagining” because while it draws on the folktale, it’s not a retelling of that tale so much as a story playing out in relation to that mythology. I’d wanted to write something centering a love story between two women for a while, but the initial spark came from a Tumblr post! It suggested the idea of selkies testifying before the UN as victims of human trafficking, which reminded me of all the things I disliked about the original folktale and its inherent darkness that is generally glossed over, starting me down the rabbit hole toward finding my own story.

How did you approach research for A Sweet Sting of Salt, and what is a favorite historical fact you learned?

I joke that I did a lot of research by osmosis: I already had a lot of base knowledge about the location, having grown up in Nova Scotia, and then set the story in a period that I’ve been absorbing information about in a low-key way for ages—1832 is also the year of the student rebellion in Les Mis, so I’ve been gleaning tidbits about this era since I first got into the musical and book back in high school. However, I had to do more specific research into things like British divorce law, period midwifery, and animal husbandry. I also visited some small, hyper-local museums on the South Shore that gave me an invaluable glimpse into daily life. I also did some fun practical research into things like “How long does it take to walk from x to y?” and “How cold IS a plunge into this body of water in March?” (Spoiler: Very.) 

A fact that fascinated me but didn’t make it into the book was that some early European settlers in the area were granted lands by luck of the draw, pulling from a deck of playing cards: Each card was assigned to a specific 50-acre lot, and whatever you pulled, you were stuck with it.

When we meet them, Jean and Muirin are isolated for different reasons. What do you hope readers still searching for their people take away from A Sweet Sting of Salt?

That there’s always hope. It’s valuable and important to keep reaching out to the world around you, to be open, and not cut yourself off—the biggest reason for Jean’s loneliness at the beginning of this story is the way she has come to keep everyone around her at arm’s length, shutting herself away out of fear, and refusing to let anyone truly get to know her because she thinks that’s the best way to protect herself from being hurt again. Reaching out to others can take a real act of courage, especially if you’ve had bad experiences in the past, but “your people” will reach back to you.

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