James Cairns: Exploring the evolution of his writing in turbulent times

Author James Cairns

James Cairns lives with his family in Paris, Ontario, on territory that the Haldimand Treaty of 1784 recognizes as belonging to the Six Nations of the Grand River in perpetuity. His new book In Crisis, On Crisis: Essays in Troubled Times (Wolsak & Wynn, 2025) is now available.

Author James Cairns. Photo by Layne Beckner Grim

James is a professor in the Department of Indigenous Studies, Law and Social Justice at Wilfrid Laurier University, where his courses and research focus on political theory and social movements. James is a staff writer at the Hamilton Review of Books, and the community relations director for the Paris-based Riverside Reading Series. He has published three books with the University of Toronto Press, most recently, The Myth of the Age of Entitlement: Millennials, Austerity, and Hope (2017), as well as numerous essays in periodicals such as Canadian Notes & Queries, the Montreal Review of Books, Briarpatch, TOPIA, Rethinking Marxism and the Journal of Canadian Studies.

James’ essay “My Struggle and My Struggle,” originally published in CNQ, appeared in Biblioasis’s Best Canadian Essays, 2025 anthology.

On Creative Writing: What life experiences have shaped your writing style?

Writing everyday - James' deeply ingrained habit

James Cairns: When I was in grad school 20 years ago, I came across this book called something like How to Write Your Dissertation in 15 Minutes! And I was like, “Hey, that sounds good!” Well, the authors had to admit, no one has ever written a dissertation in fifteen minutes. But, they explained, many people who successfully complete their dissertation began by writing for only fifteen minutes a day.

So really, the book was a guide for developing a strong writing habit. You know the sort of thing . . . the importance of writing at least a little bit every day, whether you feel like it or not. Keeping a research diary where you test out ideas, write about the writing problems you’re struggling with, or crap all over yourself if that’s how you’re feeling in the moment. Anyway, I threw myself completely into the method. And through that experience, which, when I think about it, remains ongoing, I learned what it meant for writing to be part of the process of inquiry, a way-finding activity, not just the thing you do after you’ve figured out what you want to say.

Latest essay collection more personal, for broader audience

On Creative Writing: Has your writing evolved over the years? If so, how? Through writing experience? Reading a lot? Writing courses or communities? A combination, or something else?

James Cairns: I’ve definitely felt my writing evolve while working on my new book, In Crisis, On Crisis: Essays in Troubled Times. My previous books were written for scholars and university students, whereas the essays in my crisis book are more personal and more open-ended, written for a broader audience. This new book tests out combinations of ideas and experiences that don’t fit easily in social science journals (for example, what it feels like to be a parent wracked with fear amid the eco-crisis; or what conclusions I’ve drawn from grappling with scholarly theories of crisis while simultaneously being haunted by my own personal crisis of alcoholism). I’m not saying I perfected the essay form. But my writing evolved, that’s for sure, thanks in major part to the wisdom and encouragement of Wolsak & Wynn’s publisher, Noelle Allen. I savoured the feeling of breaking through the limits of my skills as an academic writer.

Push to trust intuition is greater

To write every day from my own personal experience, but also as a professional researcher, meant trusting my intuition more than usual. That involved this weird combination of feeling both uber-confident and uber-vulnerable. I had to learn to trust myself more, you know?, my emotional and artistic sensibilities, my capacity as a storyteller. As opposed to trusting in the data, or in the existing theory I’m trying to prove. That was challenging throughout. But also a singularly rewarding intellectual and artistic opportunity.

On Creative Writing: Which authors and/or types of books do you like to read?

James Cairns: I read plenty of fiction – old stuff, new stuff, lots in translation. I listen to an hour of a novel each night while cleaning the kitchen, half-watching the muted Jays or Leafs game, and playing with my cats. That is a wonderful hour.

But nothing compares to the pleasure of reading an essay that’s rooted in the author’s individual experience yet looks outward onto the social world in ways that show me things I hadn’t seen before, or gives language to familiar feelings that I’ve never been able to articulate. Tanis MacDonald and Gary Barwin, two of my very favourite writers, are geniuses of this sort of playful/poetic/brilliantly analytical essay form.

On Creative Writing: What advice/guidance would you give to writers?

James Cairns: It’s hardly original advice, but it’s still worth singing from the rooftops: Read! Read everything, all the time. Read to discover what you like, what you don’t like, what the music of language is and might be. Read because it connects us to others, makes the world feel less lonely. Read purely for the fun of it! I’m always stunned when I meet people who say they want to write books but that they don’t read books.

Writing and editing is really a single process

On Creative Writing: Do you edit as you write, or write and edit later?

James Cairns: I’m that type of writer who needs to prattle on for five pages before it even becomes possible to produce a handful of clear, concise sentences worth working on. When Alan Sears and I were writing a book about democracy together, he lovingly teased me about my trusty “throat-clearing” approach (while pointing out the 1200 words we could go ahead and cut straightaway). So, for me, it’s all writing-and-editing; the two are but moments in a single process.

Thanks to River Street Writing for co-ordinating this interview with James.