Melanie Little decided she wanted to be a writer roughly around the time she became conscious. Or, to be more exact, around the time she became conscious of words. Her first book, self-published when she was three years old, was about a family of bank robbers (though she called them "banque" robbers, proof, perhaps, of the bilingual nature of northern Ontario, where she grew up). The book was well received, though there were some problems with production (Melanie had a habit of stapling things up the wrong side).

She was born in Peterborough, Ontario, but when she was two weeks old, she and her parents moved north to Timmins, where her father became a reporter for the Timmins Daily Press. A trip to the Timmins library--a beautiful stone building that’s since been replaced by a newer, shinier one--was the best part of her week. Her parents had begun reading to her when she was still a baby, and they showed her that libraries, even a small library in her hometown, could contain the whole world.

Melanie still reads just about everything she can get her hands on, which is what she advises all aspiring writers to do. Particular influences have been Emily and Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Margaret Atwood, and Alice Munro. She's also an avid film fan, and thinks directors like Alfred Hitchcock, Abbas Kiarostami, and Robert Altman can teach you more about good storytelling than a whole army of how-to books.

No one writer was more responsible for making Melanie want to write books of her own than Dr. Seuss. She particularly loved The Sneetches, a story about a strange race of creatures, some of whom have stars on their bellies ("stars on thars") and some of whom don't. She hopes that at least a sliver of what she's learned from Dr. Seuss has made its way into The Apprentice's Masterpiece (2008), which is also a story about discrimination arising from ludicrous ideas of what is "different."

The Apprentice's Masterpiece is a book of firsts: it is her first novel, her first book for young adults, and also her first book written in verse. It has been the recipient of  the Young Adult Honour Award given by the Canadian Library Association; a 2009 Nautilus Silver Award; the 2009 Independent Publisher Book Award, and was nominated by the YALSA 2009 Best Books for Young Adults committee. 

Melanie has won numerous awards for her other work as well.Her highly acclaimed short-story collection Confidence was named a Globe and Mail Best Book of 2003 and was short-listed for the Danuta Gleed Award. Melanie was the 2005-2006 Markin-Flanagan Canadian Writer-in-Residence at the University of Calgary, and she continues to work with other writers through workshops, classes, and consultations. Melanie was recently recruited by Annick Press to be editor-at-large for a new fiction series, Single Voice.

Melanie has moved around a lot, living in Montreal, Toronto, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Ottawa, and Calgary. She now lives in Halifax. She loves cities, but no particular one has really seemed to stick to her yet. Her idea of “home” is, instead, a person: her husband, Peter Norman. Peter is also a writer, and they have many conversations about writing (which is not as pompous as it sounds: most of these consist of moaning about how hard writing is). Their cat, Catso, also loves writing, but she generally expresses her appreciation by sitting on it.

Q&A with Melanie Little about The Apprentice's Masterpiece

1. What prompted you to write the novel?

It’s so difficult to understand the endurance of intolerance—be it racial, religious, or ideological—in our world. There seem to be so many people with good intentions devoting their lives to changing things for the better, and yet the intolerance persists, to continually tragic result. I think one of the only ways of understanding the complexity of these conflicts is to examine their mirror images—and, in many cases, their roots—in the past.

The Spanish Inquisition has become the touchstone for the evil that can arise from intolerance—so much so, unfortunately, that the specific details of its history have been reduced to cliche, and the extremely complex web of factors that made it possible are largely forgotten. We have this image of a barbaric, medieval institution and place that could never be replicated in a modern society. In fact, the Spanish Inquisition followed closely on the heels of one of the most vibrant, pluralistic, and even tolerant cultural periods in world history. How did one of the most enlightened cultures on record—one in which Jews, Muslims, and Christians lived and learned together, if not in harmony then at least in some modicum of respect—become an engine synonymous with cruelty and discrimination? This question fascinated me, in no small part because of the resonance it has for the most difficult situations in our world today.

One of the only ways to combat intolerance, I believe, is to make it impossible to ignore the individual humanity in every person. Reducing people to nothing more than a component of a group—whether the group be Hutus or Tutsis or conversos or “Old Chrisitians”—is the first step to making discrimination, hysteria, and even genocide a thinkable thing. One of the best tools we possess in the fight against this is narrative. As soon as we tell the story of one Muslim boy in Christianized Spain, his plight becomes real to us. History comes alive, and we draw parallels between his world and ours. I wanted to look back on a period that has tremendous relevance to contemporary society and make it inescapably real to my readers. It’s my hope that this story will make them examine both the past and the present in another light.

2. Can you describe the experience of traveling to Spain to research your novel?

The first monument I visited in Spain was the Synagogue of El Transito in Toledo. Its great prayer room is perhaps the most beautiful, most spiritual place I've been in my life. I’d spent the three months leading up to my trip reading everything I could get my hands on about medieval life in places like Toledo and Cordoba, cities that had a strong Jewish and then converso population. I knew that the stunning ornamental stuccowork on the synagogue's walls was the product of what's often called convivencia—the interaction of Muslims, Jews, and Christians in early Spain. I knew also that this prayer room was the legacy of hundreds of years of Jewish presence in Spain, and a place where Jews from all over Castile once came to worship and to meet. And I knew that many of those very same Jews were killed in pogroms, or forcibly converted to Christianity, or expelled. It was a powerful and in some ways horrible moment.

I journeyed south to Andalusia, where the novel is set, and I spent most of the first week there in a state of sorrow and anger. How could these people I walked among go so blithely about their lives, eating tapas in restaurants off plazas where conversos were burned at the stake? The inheritance of convivencia was etched on every single Spanish face I saw—given what had happened here, what were they all smiling about?

It was only in the second week of my visit that I came to realize that, far from forgetting the dark events of the past, the Spanish are trying to make peace with it. They are doing so, not by forgetting, but by rediscovering and reincorporating what was so very nearly obliterated during the long years of the Inquisition. Once again, Muslim and Jewish influences are everywhere—in food, in fashion, in music and art and literature and architecture. It was tremendously inspiring to realize that it is possible for a culture to recover from the darkest reaches of intolerance. But it takes care, and remembering. The bookstores are full of books set in all periods of Spain’s history, many from the perspectives of Muslims, Jews, and conversos.

3. Why did you decide to write this as a verse novel rather than as a conventional narrative?

Quite early on I realized that in order to tell the full story of even one person in medieval Spain, I would have to weave a very complex narrative indeed. A whole tapestry of elements have to be woven if I were to really capture the period, the place, and the circumstances that lead to some of the most unthinkable events in history. At the same time, I knew I wanted to write the story in a way that was accessible and palatable to young readers. I didn’t want to give them a history lesson with a few narrative elements thrown in. But to include all the threads I felt I needed, I would have needed a thousand or more pages of prose.

As the story grew, I further realized that I couldn’t tell this story fully with a single protagonist. Nor could I limit it to a single place and time. Around this time I discovered the verse novel format, and fell in love with the complex verse narratives by Australian writers Dorothy Porter and Les Murray. What if I told the story in poems?

From there, everything seemed to fall into place. The verse novel format allowed me to move through time and space with much greater ease than in prose. And I began to discover how appropriate it was to be creating these characters through poetry. I read medieval Jewish and Muslim poets like Samuel ha-Levi and, of course, the great Hafiz, and was struck by how much they managed to say in few words. Poetry was not only a supreme art to these writers, but an act of resistance. It was perfect for my characters
and their dawning awareness of the world around them.

4. What impact did researching and writing this novel have on you?

I'm a storyteller, by both profession and temperament. People tend to focus on the positive aspects of that—things like inspiration and personal expression. What doesn’t get a lot of press is the astounding responsibility that goes along with telling stories. Stories are immensely powerful, and can have a lasting effect. Even a writer with the best intentions sometimes gets it really, dangerously wrong. I read accounts of truly horrible cruelties in my research, and these affected me profoundly. But what had an even greater impact on me as a storyteller was the terrible role played by words in many of these events. Wild rumors and tall tales often led to very real lootings, arrests, and even massacres. And these were not just the fancies of the uneducated. Historians and priests who were more concerned with staying alive and employed than with representing the truth have a great deal to answer for.

Even today, there are few scholars who agree on every aspect of the Inquisition—especially regarding the question of why. Researching a historical period in such depth made me realize that there is never only one answer to a question. Never again will I consider even the most distinguished historical textbook or account as more than a jumping-off point for further exploration.

There were wonderful discoveries, as well. Among these were stories of friendship and self-sacrifice across cultures and against all odds. These are the stories that kept me going through some very dark hours. They are the kind of story I hope The Apprentice’s Masterpiece will be for others.

Annick Press books by Melanie Little:

• Apprentice's Masterpiece, The