Nancy Dutra speaks to fellow CNFC member Kim S. Kierans about her book, Journalism for the Public Good: The Michener Awards at 50.
Kim Kierans is a senior fellow and resident at Massey College, where she writes and produces The JCR: A Massey Podcast. She is an Inglis professor emerita in journalism at the University of King’s College, where she taught for 24 years.
Nancy Dutra is a coffee snob who loves writing, reading, and occasionally singing about the human condition. Her byline has appeared in Toronto Life and Brevity, and she is a contributing author to SOCAN Words and Music magazine. Dutra’s album, “Time Will Tell,” charted on the Euro-Americana Roots Music List and received favourable reviews from CBC, Exclaim, NOW, and No Depression. She is the current chair of the Marketing and Communications Committee of the Creative Nonfiction Collective.
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Accomplished journalist, professor emerita, and lifelong student, Kim Kierans first envisioned writing Journalism for the Public Good: The Michener Awards at 50 when she began her work as a resident visiting scholar at Massey College in Toronto while taking a sabbatical. Given the monumental task of completing a manuscript, I wanted to speak to Kierans—my colleague in an MFA Creative Nonfiction program—about the experience of authoring her first book. Like many CNFC members, I was looking for insight and inspiration. Despite her substantial professional experience, Kierans was daunted by her book project. “I’m not good enough. This is garbage,” she told herself after reviewing her first drafts. “But fear is a good thing. It keeps you humble, striving to do better. It spurs impetus,” she says. “The key is to not let it overwhelm you.”
Kierans took over half a decade to complete her comprehensive book about the coveted Michener Award—often referred to as Canada’s Pulitzer. Established in 1970 by the late Right Honourable Roland Michener, Governor General from 1967 to 1974, the award honours, celebrates, and promotes excellence in journalism, and is presented to news organizations big and small whose dogged reporting make an impact on public life. Kierans was well suited to write a book on the Michener Awards given her extensive work as a journalist and her prior role in awarding the prize. “I was a Michener award judge and chief judge for 12 years,” she says. Journalism for the Public Good provides an intriguing account of the award’s inception, funding, and history including some controversial stories behind the prestigious prize.
Kierans started her manuscript in 2018, spending the academic year researching and conducting interviews, a process she wholeheartedly loved. “I felt like a prospector mining for gold,” she says of her time researching at Library and Archives Canada and at Carleton’s journalism school. This fervent period was followed by two fallow years due to her fulsome teaching schedule. In September 2021, Kierans was invited back to Massey College as a Senior Fellow and resident at which point the tough work of writing and editing began. After returning to her manuscript in earnest, Kierans hit the “messy middle”—the hair-pulling period where many writers become stuck. But she didn’t give up. “Part of my motivation to finish was because some of the people I’d interviewed who had generously donated their time, began to die,” she says. Kierans worked with a developmental editor for over a year to help streamline her project and maintain momentum. After toiling away for another couple of years and sending out queries and book proposals to numerous publishing houses, Kierans was offered a contract in 2023 with Bighorn Books, University of Calgary Press. But a book deal wasn’t her only achievement.
In 2023, Kierans was awarded a Doctor of Civil Law due to her “dedication to the highest principles of journalism, her professional integrity and deep commitment to the power of journalism for positive social change and for her outstanding service to the University of King’s College.” This was approximately one week before I met Kierans. I was astounded by her modesty given her impressive accolades. Knowing there are CNFC members like me who are more comfortable identifying as a writer rather than a journalist, I asked Kierans—who identifies as a journalist and not a writer—if she has any words of wisdom. “Journalism is not rocket science. Find facts, research, and verify. Remember that a story is never complete. Journalism is history on the run,” she says, thinking of former CBC chief anchor Knowlton Nash’s book.
Kierans began her work as an international media trainer in 2001 while on summer break from her professorial duties. With a focus on empowering women in the media, Kierans worked alongside local journalists in Southeast Asia to help build independent media in post-conflict and developing countries. Though she has trained many reporters in Canada and overseas, Kierans continues to read journalism texts for her edification. One of her favourite resources is Digging Deeper: A Canadian Reporter’s Research Guide cowritten by several authors including Dean Jobbs, her colleague and friend. “Dean is one of my idols because he is confidant, humble, and always learning,” she says. Kierans also regularly turns to Roy Peter Clark’s The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve Your Writing, a text she says introduced her to new forms of writing and new ways to tell a story. For inspiration, she is currently reading Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings to inform her next book about the loss of both her mother and one of her daughters under tragic circumstances. “It is a memoir over generations that deals with the troubled history of my family.” When Kierans was fourteen, her mother died of a drug overdose. Kierans worked hard to have a different life but when she was in her 50s, her 24-year-old daughter died of an accidental drug overdose. Kierans says, “We can’t escape our histories.”
Nor can writers escape the need to tell stories. Whether Kierans has been reporting on the lives of others or now, writing about her own life, she remains steadfast in her pursuit to work and write with integrity. Her book Journalism for the Public Good: The Michener Awards at 50 exemplifies her own tenacious pursuit to amplify the most impactful reporting in the field to which she’s devoted her professional life. Not only did I find her book a fascinating read, but it also helped me develop my knowledge about Canadian media and journalism which has increased my confidence as a budding reporter. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Kierans, my MFA colleague and now friend, it’s that hard work and humility look good together. I can’t wait to read her memoir.