Well, all fascinating stuff about the lone songman. I haven't had time to plow through all of it but wouldn't it be ironic if Cohen and Dylan were spies in the house of love? I mean in Jeff Well's house here, ironic no? I loved how Jeff always started a post with a Cohen or Dylan quote. Anyways, my take. It seems Cohen could be in deep. Sure, why not. That would just be too delicious. But I also wonder if Mrs. Diamond isn't just going the Whitley Strieber route? You know write some edge fiction, it sells so-so, write a personal revelatory expose of high weirdness and suddenly you tap into a bigger pool of readers. I mean lets be honest, we wouldn't be discussing her if she stopped at A Nun's Diary.
Just a little interesting her career output as a creative fiction writer. It pays to remember MKULTRA memoirs is basically a genre now. Also, if you talk to a lot of "creative writers" these days you get some pretty interesting post-modern porous takes on just what is "reality" and what is "fantasy", or what use to be called fact and fiction.
I know some people will throw me in the deniers camp, silencing the victim, etc. by just bringing up a modicum of considering the source and their motivations. But you know I loved Jerzy Kosinski's The Painted Bird, but when he got busted for it allegedly saying it was autobiographical, that's just the brakes of the reality test. It seems Ann makes a living teaching creative writing and improving peoples stories, I think that is something to keep in mind.
Also, I'm a mild, sporadic Cohen fan but if it were true it wouldn't kill me. In fact, this sounds like something that would really be more of an upper for serious Cohen fans. A new Deep State decoder ring to parse his songs with. Like Nick Cave really being a vampire or something.
Anyways, from her own website and some writers one:
Ann Diamond
Ann Diamond, poet, short-story writer, novelist (b at Montréal, Qué 11 April 1951). Ann Diamond earned a BA at Concordia University and studied created writing at Goddard College. She published her first book of poems, Lil, in 1977.
Diamond, Ann
Ann Diamond, poet, short-story writer, novelist (b at Montréal, Qué 11 April 1951). Ann Diamond earned a BA at Concordia University and studied created writing at Goddard College. She published her first book of poems, Lil, in 1977. Her other poetry collections include A Nun's Diary (1984), a series of prose poems that explore a nun's marriage to God and the relationship between sexuality and spirituality. ROBERT LEPAGE wrote a stage adaptation of A Nun's Diary, titled Echo, which premiered in Montréal in 1989. The poems in Diamond's Terrorist Letters (1992) offer a wide-ranging critique of Western society.
Ann Diamond also writes fiction. Mona's Dance (1988), a novel narrated by a female writer, fantastically recounts the picaresque adventures of a group of eccentrics living in a Montréal neighbourhood. Her distinctive narrative blurring of realism and surrealism is also evident in her short stories, collected in Snakebite (1989) and Evil Eye (1994), which often feature female characters burdened by painful relationships. Evil Eye won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. Diamond's 2000 novel, Dead White Males, is a surreal detective story. A mysterious atmosphere also pervades in Static Control (2005), in which the young protagonist searches for her estranged father and answers to her mother's death.
In her 2006 memoir, My Cold War (republished in 2008 under the title A Certain Girl), Ann Diamond recounts her childhood experiences in Montréal as an unwitting participant in secret mind-control experiments, allegedly sponsored by the American CIA.
Ann Diamond - Freelance writer and editor
Writer, editor, writing coach
Ann Diamond was born in the Week of the Pioneer, on the Day of the Inspirer. She has been helping writers shape stories ever since she can remember, which is a long time.Always a believer in stories as vehicles of awareness and transformation, late in life Ann discovered she really does believe in classical structure, and set about to find out how to go about adapting the ancient principles of drama to a post-modern imagination.
In 1998, she began a successful workshop series called 'Unlocking Your Stories'.
Ann Diamond and her brother in My Cold War
My Cold War
by Ann Diamond
Ann Diamond's terrifying tale of growing up in Canada during the Cold War - an era when secrecy ran rampant, ruining careers and lives.
Ann Diamond has taught creative writing (fiction, poetry and drama) at Concordia University and University College of the Cariboo (now Thompson Rivers University).
Lately she has been living on a trapeze between Greece and Canada.
There's a lot more to her story, of course, but she's interested in hearing about yours.
SPIRIT ED IT/OR...
Individual and/or group coaching for writers of memoirs, stories, plays, novels or any writing that runs, walks or crawls in a narrative way.
My particular interest lies in dramatic structure. Order out of chaos! Structure is a writer's friend, and a dynamic tool for unlocking the power of narrative. I like to ask questions that stimulate writers to see their work afresh.
One of my sub-personalities is a shaman whose deep mission is liberating stories from the world of the unconscious where they often lie dormant. I like to think I have an intuitive gift for sensing a story, even in the embryonic stages, and for midwifery, in terms of helping writers take hold of difficult, even traumatic, material and moving it on towards publication if that's what the writer wants.
Another part of me is a medicine woman manquée who sees writing and storytelling as fundamental to human life, invaluable paths of healing and integration, in our possibly endless journey toward self-understanding. When we write stories, we are hunter-gatherers in the wild, planting and propagating inner truth. We stumble on resources we didn't know we had, and make discoveries that sometimes result in works of art.
In writing, as in snorkelling, one should never wear a life jacket! Be a mermaid! Dive deep, with or without a mask.
I enjoy working with writers at all stages of the creative process, from journaling to the final edit.
http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/e ... n-diamond/
http://www.anndiamond.net/Ann%20Diamond ... editor.htm