Sharon Berg Interviews David Giuliano

(Latitude 46, 2025)

David Giuliano

Sharon Berg:     David, I know the promotion of new books can eat up an author’s time and attention, so I appreciate your engagement with my questions. To start, the tension revealed in The Upending of Wendall Forbes begins with his worry about Ruby’s state of mind. The reader cares deeply for Wendall by the time Ruby speaks about her worries for him. The distractions presented by several people who show up at their home, needing shelter in the midst of a snowstorm, shifts the attention/tension to their situations. Yet, the focus on Wendall’s upending persists, though Wendall isn’t speaking a word by then. I’m curious, how did you know rendering Wendall mute during their visits would maintain the reader’s attention on Wendall?
 
David Giuliano: Silence can speak loudly. I sensed that Wendall’s silence, like a vacuum, would draw the reader to his dilemma. I tried to remind readers, periodically throughout the narrative, that Wendall was experiencing the presence of these strangers as counterbalances to his sense of defeat; to the tension between his love for life and the difficult choice he faces.

At the grand entry of the Biigtigong Nishnaabeg Powwow a couple of years ago, when the Elders spoke, they spoke about the importance of listening to the young voices. Wendall’s vow of silence reflects his commitment to listen and pay attention to the glimmers of hope in the world.
 
SB:         I’ve heard the same lesson about silence from my dear friend, Cree Elder Pauline Shirt and many other First Nations people and readings I did for my M.Ed and D.Ed in First Nations Education. Silence speaks loudly. Yet your title, The Upending of Wendall Forbes, almost shouts as the first thing the reader notes is different about your book. That title raises questions about what this story will reveal about his upending. At the same time, you keep a strong tension related to that question until the end. Can you comment on how Wendall’s upending is significantly different from that of other people who are kind and sensitive?
 
DG:        We all experience upendings. They are part of life. As the 1980s alt-rock band R.E.M. put it, Everybody Hurts.  Is Wendall’s upending significantly different? All human suffering is unique to the individual experiencing it, because we are unique. We encounter our upendings through the events that preceded them. So, Wendall’s—and your and my—upendings are different.                                                                                       
 
It is also true that our pain or losses become real and meaningful within community through our interactions with others.                                                                                           

The upending in the title has several meanings. Wendall’s life is upended generally by everything that goes with aging, and specifically by dementia. His despair and loneliness are upended by the strangers who take refuge in his and Ruby’s home during a blizzard. Finally, the novel concludes with a somewhat up ending.
 
SB:         I used to live in the anonymity of an apartment above stores in Toronto, later in a Housing Co-operative, and now in the middle of a national forest in a hamlet of 200 souls who deal with frequent power outages. Our surroundings influence our perceptions. I’m thinking you’ve rendered Twenty-Six Mile House as a character in this story because you recognize one’s physical surroundings can deeply affect relationships developed with neighbours. Can you comment on this? In your story, even streetlights seem important to how one views the world outside one’s home.
 
DG:        Naturally, when the power is out, so too are the streetlights. As a literary device, the darkness surrounding the Forbes home amplifies the light glowing inside: the bonding, intimacy and storytelling of strangers.
 
There is a lot of despair in the world. Wendall feels it. I wanted to create a small crucible of light against the gloom. There is a preponderance of great, post-apocalyptic novels coming out. They reflect the view that the only way to a better world is through the destruction of the existing one. Clear the slate and start again. The Upending of Wendall Forbes offers an alternative view, suggesting we are not completely beyond redemption.
 
Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.” I imagine the stranded strangers leave Wendall and Ruby’s, like seeds carried by the wind, to plant, connect with and build world-changing communities.
 
SB:         Your comment on community brings me to ask whether you live in an urban or rural setting yourself? Do you feel there’s anything about the environment surrounding you that impacts your writing and its setting? Open spaces? Crowds of people? Or is your focus the internal space of your home? Please explain how your own environment affects your approach to writing.
 
DG:        Twenty-Six Mile House is a fictionalized version of the town where I live: Marathon. (Note: a marathon is twenty-six miles long.) Much of The Upending of Wendall Forbes takes place inside his and Ruby’s home, but the setting—a small, isolated, northern town—plays an important role as the place where a group of disparate strangers find refuge, inspiration and courage.
 
My previous novel, The Undertaking of Billy Buffone, also takes place in Twenty-Six Mile House.
 
James Joyce said, “For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin, I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal.”
 
My novels are set in a particular place that I know, love, and sometimes hate. In my writing, I try to unearth something universal that transcends geographic boundaries.

SB:         Some books require intensive research of a particular topic, an historical era, or some other aspect of the story. Please describe the most intensive research you did for The Upending of Wendall Forbes. How far would you travel to conduct research? Have you done most of your research on the internet or through books and printed documents?

DG:        My research primarily involved hunting down credible journal articles online about the clinical and recreational use of psychedelic drugs in the 1960s and 1970s. LSD and psilocybin were used to treat addiction and mental illnesses, as a pathway to enlightenment by people like Timothy Leary, and as a tool for brainwashing by the CIA in experiments like those carried out at the Allen Institute in Montreal.
 
Physically, I did not travel far in my research, but I did travel psychedelically. I ingested a high dose of psilocybin in a safe, clinical environment. That trip helped me write credibly about Wendall’s experience with LSD as a young man.
 
SB:         I would say you made a trip to a place many might consider distant, then. Your candor about this seems a segue to your readers’ interest in the social context or movement that served as inspiration for your work. Do you feel it’s important for authors to speak to whatever inspired them to begin their book? Are there times when that question crosses a boundary you’d rather uphold?
 
DG:        I was sixty-two years old when I started writing The Upending of Wendall Forbes, on the cusp of the fourth quarter of my life. I was wondering what the next twenty years will be like, if I am fortunate enough to live that long. And, as I am riding on the tail end of the boomer generation, I am painfully aware of how capitalism, greed and disregard for the natural world have failed the climate and generations following ours.
 
I was thinking about what it means to be an elder. Writing the novel provided opportunities to explore these concerns and questions.
 
Leonard Cohen told Interview Magazine, “To keep our hearts open is probably the most urgent responsibility you have as you get older.” Wendall and Ruby’s open house is a metaphor for their open hearts. They remind me to keep my house—my heart—open as I age.

SB:         You speak about approaching your gift for fiction closer to the end of your life than the beginning. Many authors say a writer never feels they’re finished with their work, that they’d always wish to adjust or tweak their writing even after it’s published. Do you feel that way about The Upending of Wendall Forbes? What would you change about this book if you had the time and opportunity?
 
DG:        Fiction is finished in the reader's imagination. I think it was Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead who said something like once he set his children—his songs—free in the world, he let go and trusted them to the world. I feel that way about my novels. I love to hear what readers’ minds have done with what I’ve written.
 
It is also true that, yes, I’m perpetually wanting to improve The Upending of Wendall Forbes. I am satisfied with the overall narrative, structure and characters. However, I tinker in my mind with details, see a better word or way to express something. Fortunately, I started writing another novel before The Upending of Wendall Forbes was launched.  So, my creative energies are preoccupied elsewhere.
 
SB:         That brings me to ask, how does this book fit it the stream of your other literary works? Is there a fundamental difference between The Upending of Wendall Forbes and your prior or future works?
 
DG:        For thirty years, I published creative nonfiction essays, articles and the occasional poem. In broad strokes, they were about ethics, justice and spirituality. (Visit Other Publications for details.) My first book, Post Card from the Valley, was a collection of essays and became a Canadian bestseller, in part because of my role as Moderator of The United Church of Canada.
 
Around the same time, I published two illustrated children’s books— The Alligator in Naomi’s Pillow and Jeremiah and the Letter e —for our children.
 
It’s Good to be Here: Stories We Tell About Cancer is a memoir about my twenty-year journey with cancer. It explores the power of story to heal and the metaphysics of medicine.
 
I retired at fifty-seven to write more. Since then, I’ve written two novels. The Undertaking of Billy Buffone won the Bressani Prize for literature. The Upending of Wendall Forbes was launched in September.
 
I value both nonfiction and fiction. Teacher Jennifer Powell puts it this way: “Nonfiction is learning through information; fiction is learning through imagination.”  I can see that, over the years, I have migrated from information to imagination.
 
I am less didactic in my writing. As Wendall muses: “One of the few actual blessings of getting old is the atrophy of one’s certainty.” The atrophy of my certainty, like Wendall’s, is better suited to fiction than to nonfiction.
 
SB:         I love that perspective on the difference between fiction and nonfiction, and that it’s so succinct! No segue here, but if you were asked to name another author’s work that you feel compares to the overall theme in this book, which author and what title would it be? How are they the same or different from your book?
 
DG:        Three books come to mind.
 
Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett, is about a group of people who are taken hostage in South America and end up becoming friends with the terrorists. While writing The Upending of Wendall Forbes, I asked myself, what might be a hostage scenario in northern Ontario?   Thus, the blizzard.
 
A Man Called Ove, by Fredrik Backman, is about a grouchy man who, after losing his beloved wife and his job, decides to end his life out of hopelessness. The love and demands of his new neighbours interrupt his plans. Likewise, a band of strangers interrupts and shifts Wendall’s plans.
 
The birth narrative in the Gospel of Luke is a story about something new being born in the meanest conditions, despair and oppression, attended by a band of shepherds—marginal members of society. Hope in The Upending of Wendall Forbes is as fragile as an infant and as wise as an elder.
 
SB:         If The Upending of Wendall Forbes was burning and it was possible for you to rescue just one character from that inferno, which one do you think deserves the effort for a second chance at life? Perhaps even a sequel to this book? Please explain your choice.
 
DG:        If The Upending of Wendall Forbes was burning, I would take my cue from Jean Cocteau, the French multidisciplinary artist. Cocteau, when asked what he would rescue if his house were on fire, replied, “I believe I would take the fire.” I would first want to rescue the creative impulse that is the source of my writing. Without it, I would be lost.
 
As for which character I would like to know better, it would be Evelyn, the co-publisher at Northern Pike Publishing. I like her. She greets Tyler, the intern, one morning:

​“You’re early.” Evelyn’s three-word declarative sentence does not require modifiers or expansion. Her tone communicates suspicion. Tyler never arrives early.
 
With a thumb and forefinger on each arm of their frame, Evelyn lowers her glasses to the front of her Icelandic sweater. The glasses rest there suspended by a green cord, sparkling in a circle of knitted reindeer. Tyler can’t tell if the faux diamonds and the feline profile of the glasses are intended to be ironic.

​To my mind, she’s got gravitas.
 
SB:         I’m chuckling over your answer to that last question, David. I would say that captures what I perceive of your character as a writer, the story being of prime import but one character who upsets the narrative taking everyone’s heart. That’s a perfect way to end this interview. Thanks so much for giving readers of The tEmz Review insights into both your inspirations and your writing process.

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David Giuliano is an award-winning writer of fiction and nonfiction books, essays, and poems. His first novel, The Undertaking of Billy Buffone, won the Bressani Prize for literature. His second novel, The Upending of Wendall Forbes, launched in September 2025. Postcards from the Valley, a collection of essays, was a Canadian bestseller. It’s Good to Be Here is a memoir about cancer, the metaphysics of medicine and the power of story to heal. Giuliano has also published two illustrated children’s books. He lives on the north shore of Lake Superior. Find him online:
www.davidgiuliano.ca
instagram.com/davidwgiuliano/
facebook.com/david.giuliano.73
YouTube@davidgiuliano6907
Wikipedia David_Giuliano

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​Sharon Berg attended the Banff School of Fine Arts Writing Studio in 1982 and was accepted to Banff’s Leighton Artist Colony in 1987. She taught in Ontario after studying to become a teacher with a focus on First Nations Education: B.A./Laurentian U.; B.Ed/U of T; M.Ed/York U; and D.Ed/UBC. She received a Certificate in Magazine Journalism from Ryerson U and is an alumni of Humber College’s Writing Program. Sharon founded and operated the international literary E-Zine Big Pond Rumours (2006-2019) and its associated press, releasing chapbooks of Canadian poets as prizes for the magazine’s contests. Her poetry appears as full books with Borealis, Coach House, and Cyberwit, and she has four chapbooks with BPR Press. Sharon’s short fiction is with Porcupine’s Quill, and her nonfiction appears with BPR Press. Her writing appears across Canada, the USA, Mexico, Chile, England, Wales, Netherlands, Germany, Siberia, Romania, India, Persia, Singapore, and Australia. Her 3rd poetry collection Stars in the Junkyard was a Finalist in the 2022 International Book Awards, and her narrative history The Name Unspoken: Wandering Spirit Survival School won a 2020 IPPY Award for Regional Nonfiction. When she retired from teaching, she opened Oceanview Writers Retreat in Charlottetown (Terra Nova National Park) Newfoundland.