KPU English instructor releases personal essay collection exploring ‘glimmers of hope and beauty’

Although it’s his fourth book to hit shelves, Gavin Paul calls his latest work more of a “happy accident” than a calculated decision.

Paul, an English instructor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, published a collection of personal essays entitled Growing Old in the Anthropocene, which was released in late August.

The book compiles 15 personal essays Paul wrote over the past five years. It covers a range of topics, from his serious ponderings on mortality to feeding neighbourhood crows.

While he has always used writing as a means of making sense of his thoughts, Paul says he never set out with the intention of producing this specific book.

“I was sort of pleased — and slightly horrified — to notice that, ‘Oh, I think there’s a through line here. These are all kind of connected. They’re all dealing with certain anxieties that I’m feeling,'” Paul says.

When he realized he had an assortment of works that came together naturally, he decided he wanted to collect his writing into a book that would let him say, “OK, this is who I was at a certain moment of time.”

Paul says the freedom and control that came with self-publishing was important because he wanted his latest book to be a snapshot of himself.

“I spent a lot of time thinking about fonts and headers, where I wanted the page numbers to be,” he says.

While he worried whether he should get a second opinion, he says the book ultimately turned out to be as he had pictured.

Paul’s love for storytelling stems back to his childhood. Even before he knew how to write, he remembers dictating stories about Bugs Bunny to his mom and making her write them down for him, he says.

Today, he finds the process of writing can be slow, and, at times, frustrating.

“Writing is hard,” he says. “The slowness of writing, like forcing yourself to slow down, stop, think, process information, and look inward, I think is a virtue.”

He says there were pieces in the book that he started writing without any idea of where he was headed. But through the process of writing about his experiences, he gained new insights and changes in perspective about himself.

“I’m always trying to remind students that writing is a tool for introspection,” Paul says. “It is a really effective vehicle for exploring your own thoughts, feelings, and memories.”

Each of the pieces in the collection tries to look for “little glimmers of hope and beauty” in serious and heavy moments, Paul says.

Copies of Growing Old in the Anthropocene are available for purchase at the KPU Bookstore and online on Amazon.