What I Mean to Say

Remaking Conversation In Our Time

NOW AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK

A CBC BOOKS BEST CANADIAN NONFICTION BOOK OF 2024

ENOUGH SMALL TALK. LET’S GET RIGHT TO IT: WHY CAN’T WE TALK TO EACH OTHER ANYMORE? WHAT MAKES GOOD COMMUNICATION? AND HOW DO WE RESTORE THE LOST ART OF CONVERSATION?

by Ian Williams

In contemporary society, much of our communication exists in a new dimension, the online space, and it’s changing how we regard each other and how we converse. In the digital realm, we can be anonymous, we can make false and hurtful comments yet evade consequences in a hurried scroll of clicks and swipes. But a good conversation takes time and patience, courage, even. We need to realize that one-half of our conversations is, in fact, listening. And aren't the best conversationalists—like the best musicians—good listeners?

With What I Mean to Say, award-winning novelist and poet Ian Williams seeks to ignite a conversation about conversation, to confront the deterioration of civic and civil discourse, and to reconsider the act of conversing as the sincere, open exchange of thoughts and feelings. Alternately serious and playful, Williams nimbly leaps between topics of discussion and, along the way, is discursive, digressive, and endlessly generous—like any great conversationalist.

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RIGHTS SOLD
World: House of Anansi Press, October 2024
World Recording: CBC, October 2024

232 pages
Finished book now available

(Photo: Justin Morris)

ABOUT IAN WILLIAMS

Ian Williams is the author of the novel Reproduction, which was the winner of the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize and was published in the U.S., U.K., and Italy; Personals which was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Robert Kroetsch Poetry Book Award; Not Anyone’s Anything, winner of the Danuta Gleed Literary Award for the best first collection of short fiction in Canada, and You Know Who You Are, a finalist for the ReLit Prize for poetry. In 2020 he published his latest poetry collection, Word Problems. In fall 2021 he released Disorientation: Being Black in the World, which was shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Writers Trust Prize for Non-Fiction and the BC Book Prize for Non-Fiction. He has been named the 2024 CBC Massey Lecturer.

Williams is Professor of English at the University of Toronto, where he is Director of the Creative Writing Program and Academic Advisor. He completed his doctorate in English there and spent four years teaching poetry in the Creative Writing Department at the University of British Columbia. In 2014-2015 he was the Writer-in-Residence for the University of Calgary's Distinguished Writers Program. He has held fellowships or residencies from Vermont Studio Center, the Banff Center, Cave Canem, the William Southam Journalism Fellowship, and the National Humanities Center. In the summer of 2022 he was a Visiting Fellow at the American Library in Paris. He is currently on the board of the Griffin Poetry Prize.

Williams writes book reviews for The Guardian and has written articles for The Globe and Mail, Maclean’s, The Toronto Star, Hazlitt, Sportsnet.ca, Publishers Weekly, The Walrus, Lithub, Granta, and the Italian journals Sotto Il Vulcano (Feltrinelli), and Civlità delle Macchine (Fondazione Leonardo). Born in Trinidad, Williams grew up in Brampton, Ontario, and has worked in Massachusetts and Ontario.

Watch Ian in conversation with Senior Fellow Randy Boyagoda in the Massey Dialogue “Can We Talk? Civil Discourse and What It Means for Liberal Democracy”

Two weeks after publication, What I Mean to Say is #7 on the CBC Canadian fiction bestseller list for October 12-19

PRAISE FOR REPRODUCTION

“With so many hundreds of books, it’s hard even to scratch the surface, but one debut to look out for is Canadian prizewinner Reproduction by Ian Williams (Dialogue, September), an enjoyably offbeat family saga set in polyglot Toronto.”
 — THE GUARDIAN, UK

“…This work successfully examines major themes of empathy, responsibility, secrecy, race, multiculturalism, misogyny, and honesty.” — LIBRARY JOURNAL, starred review

“Williams’s unsparing view on the past’s repetition is heartrending. This ambitious experiment yields worthwhile results.” — PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

“There is an entire modern Canadian literature that fortunately arrives in Italy and shows what is possible with words…. In this brainy structure, Williams puts all his ability to experiment by generating a novel that reproduces itself, in a complicated yet brilliant metaphor of the process of forming a family, the center of the analysis contained in "Reproduction": how it is formed, how it crumbles before it is even born, how it survives or reforms out of necessity.” — L'INDIEPENDENTE, Italy

PRAISE FOR DISORIENTATION: BEING BLACK IN THE WORLD

“A lyrical, closely observed contribution to the literature of race and social justice.” — KIRKUS REVIEWS

“Disorientation is so honest, vulnerable, courageous and funny that it left me dying to sit down over a long coffee with Ian Williams. Make that two lattes, and I’m buying!” — LAWRENCE HILL, author of The Book of Negroes

“In Disorientation, Ian Williams captures the impact of racial encounters on racialized people, especially when one's minding their own business. Sometimes, the consequences are only irritating, but sometimes they are deadly. Driven by the police killings and street protests of 2020, Williams realized he could offer a Canadian perspective on race. He explores things such as, the unmistakable moment when a child realizes they're Black, the ten characteristics of institutional whiteness, how friendship helps protect against being a target of racism and blame culture.”— CBC BOOKS, top non-fiction pick for fall 2021