Author A.S.A. Harrison
and
Husband John Massey
& melting into shadows and death. I am always curious about the author's background.
What are the life influences on the author, the major relationship in her life?
A.S.A. Harrison in the 1960s had an early and short marriage to video artist
Rodney Werden. Harrison's brother shared a story, at her memorial, of buying a
wedding gift for his sister and her following thank you note:
"Dear Brian, thank you for the ironing board cover. It is a lovely ironing
board cover. I shall iron upon it."
The author met visual artist John Massey while working on her book Revelations. While
visiting in New York (she followed Massey there), they had dinner together (he offered to
walk her home, she refused), there ensued an attack by an armed gunman
(saved by a Christmas-tree seller who received a bullet for his efforts), she called
Massey shaken from the hospital (he came over, offering comfort), and thus began their
time together as a couple.
They met in the late 1980s and spent 25 creative years together. In 1990, they
bought a dilapidated horse stable and transformed it into their home, complete
with a space for each of them, an artist studio and an author's writing room.
Combining the syllables of their last names, their home was MaHa.
In 2006, when Harrison was 58, they married. They were together daily, they had
a menagerie of dogs and cats.
Massey was involved with video installations and experimental, cutting edge photos;
he exhibited in Cologne, Paris, Amsterdam, Antwerp and many Canadian cities.
At Harrison's memorial, Massey had this to say about his wife:
"...Our life together was often very tempestuous, but after twenty-five years
of difficult awakenings, she helped me to understand the simple and profound
axiom that acceptance is the key to love and intelligence....in those early days
and in the many years to come, our disagreements rained down on us like a
storm...Neither of us gave ground easily. It was terrible and wonderful at the
same time. Each small loss resulted in a gain. One more layer of the onion gone.
Each of us closer to the zero point of non-judgement. Each closer to a one-love
where subject disappears and there are only possibilities. It was as if we were
in a crucible, boiling each other down to find the essential truths..."
While finishing the final stages of The Silent Wife, her cancer returned. A.S.A. Harrison longed
to write fiction for that big audience, and this she did. Penguin in the U.S. and Canada picked
up her book, as well as publishers internationally.
Book Discussion: Thursday, November 2 at 10 AM