Courtesy Mark Morton
Mark Morton, senior education developer at the Center for Teaching Excellence at UW, has been named one of five finalists for the Arlene Barline Award for Science Fiction and Fantasy for his young adult novel, The Headmasters. The novel follows protagonist Maple as she tries to challenge the Headmasters, an enemy that can read your thoughts and is seemingly impossible to defeat. Adjudicators of the award have called it “a new science fiction novel that feels like it’s already a classic”.
Morton has previously written non-fiction books on a wide range of topics including language, food, culture, sex, and history. The non-fiction writing started while he previously taught at the University of Winnipeg across from CBC Radio, where Morton pitched ideas about the origins of words to CBC, with this idea becoming a regular segment. A publisher in Winnipeg suggested he write a book, leading to his writing Cupboard Love. He continued to write non-fiction books and later moved to Waterloo, adopting four older kids. Morton and his wife, dedicating more time to their family, temporarily put their writing careers on hold. As their kids were old enough to be independent, Morton wanted to write again, but away from non-fiction this time. “I just felt like my memory couldn’t hold that kind of information anymore,” he said.
Morton wanted to write something imaginative, and took inspiration from his daughter who would take a lot of world news to heart, during a time with overseas conflicts, climate change, and Trump being elected for his first term. For The Headmasters he wanted to write something dystopian with a challenging antagonist, stating, “It’s taking on a reality that in many ways is crappy and scary, but [shows] that we can manage…We’ve come through things that are very difficult”.
Morton describes the main character as extremely resilient and attributes the inspiration of that quality to his four kids. “It’s astonishing and I wanted to condense that,” he said.
He was also influenced by Northrop Frye, a Canadian literary critic, who supervised Morton’s PhD supervisor at the University of Toronto. Morton states, “Frye said that there is only one story and one story only. The loss and recovery of identity…The shape of The Headmasters is just like every story that’s ever been written.”
As for his journey to writing, Morton says, “It took a while to unlearn how to write like an academic and how to unlearn that to write for CBC.” From CBC, his change in writing carried over to his non-fiction work, which made the process more fluid for The Headmasters. “But there are a few things I had to guard against. For example, certain words that I still tend to use that are a little too formal.” Morton also shared some writing wisdom: “To me, the best writing is as simple as can be but as complex as it needs to be.”
The Headmasters can be found on Amazon and Shadowpaw Press.
