Gloria Blizzard invites Montrealers to a deeply personal journey through entries detailing her travels in her award-winning essay collection, ‘Black Cake, Turtle Soup, and Other Dilemmas. There will be a live reading, engaging discussion, and Q&A, on Wednesday, March 6, from 5-7 pm at Librairie Paragraphe Bookstore.
Blizzard’s journey to becoming a writer was anything but traditional. “I never really wrote as a child. I was a musician—a classical guitarist,” she says. Music, not writing, was her first form of artistic expression. However, growing up in a household filled with books and poetry, she developed a deep appreciation for literature.
Her transition into writing began with poetry and songwriting. Over time, this led her to cultural commentary, music and book reviews, and finally, personal essays. In 2017, she was invited to write for CBC, where she explored harmonizing musical identities—an experience that solidified her love for nonfiction essays. “That’s when I realized the essay form really, really works for me,” she explained to the CONTACT.
She decided to pursue a MFA in Creative Nonfiction at the University of King’s College to further hone her craft. “I wanted a writing community, mentorship, and the space to fully dedicate myself to my work.” During her studies, she published essays in literary journals, gaining recognition for her distinct narrative style.
She defines her path to publishing as unique. Kwame Fraser, then the publisher of Dundurn Press, noticed her articles on LinkedIn and reached out. “He wrote to me and said, ‘Gloria, what are you doing now?’ I said, ‘Actually, I’m writing a book.’ He asked if I wanted to submit something, and that was it!”
The result that came from that chance interaction was her new book Black Cake, Turtle Soup, and Other Dilemmas, a collection of essays that map Blizzard’s journey across geographies and cultural identities. “Music, memory, and motion have been constants in my life,” she explains. “Music—whether calypso, jazz, Brazilian, Cuban, or classical—has shaped my experience. Memory connects me to my ancestors, my childhood, and the traditions that ground me. And motion is about movement in every sense—physical travel, mental shifts, historical reckonings.”
Blizzard describes the book as a kind of travelogue, not just in the geographical sense but also through time and emotion. Her essays explore the complexities of belonging and the intersections of art, history, race, and personal identity. She values the use of storytelling to better understand one another. “One of the most rewarding experiences is hearing from readers who connect with my work on a deeply personal level,” she says, “The personal becomes universal, and that’s the beauty of literature.”
In one of her essays ‘The Year of Jazz,’ Blizzard writes about the aftermath of a brain injury, where she experienced languages unintentionally changing mid-sentence. “I would find the right the right word, but I would use the wrong language. I will be speaking in English and then I would pull out in my brain the word for bathing suit in French for no reason.”
The book recently won the Black People’s Choice Award and has been met with enthusiastic reception across Canada. But beyond the accolades, she is looking to expand its reach—both linguistically and geographically.
She hopes to have some essays translated into French and Brazilian Portuguese. “French has been a part of my life, and my time in Brazil had a huge impact on me as a musician and writer. In Brazil, the connection to African heritage is so much more overt. It was powerful to be in a place where so many people looked like me.”
For Blizzard, storytelling is an act of both personal and communal resonance. “We can’t change the world,” she acknowledges, “but we can bring what we do.”
Black Cake, Turtle Soup is available in Montreal across Indigo book-stores and online on Amazon Canada for more information on Gloria and her upcoming events visit her website at : https://www.gloriablizzard.com
