Name: Anne T. Donahue (@annetdonahue)
Best Known For: Nobody Cares (2018)
Favourite Twitter account: An impossible question! I’m obsessed with all 2000+ accounts I follow.
Entertainment
It’s no secret how much you love Leonardo DiCaprio and many other stars from pop culture. Do you identify as a fangirl? I think “fangirl” is such an unnecessary pejorative. What does gender have to do with loving something, you know? And why do we dismiss loving something as a feeling or act reserved for youth? Fans fuel industry. They’re important. But while I’ll always be a fan of Leo, my love and affinity has cooled a bit. I mean, I think it had to! You can’t keep Titanic momentum up for over 20 years. At some point, you have to remember that he was in Woody Allen’s Celebrity.
You’ve watched Titanic over and over again, so what was it like to see Kate Winslet in person? Oh man, I’m surprised you remember that! Probably unsurprisingly, it was very . . . normal? Ordinary? TIFF is strange because you see people you’ve watched in film and TV for years, and they all-of-a-sudden are right there and look like anyone you’d see in a restaurant. But it was obviously cool to see Kate Winslet, albeit very briefly!
Shopping
In your book, you write: “when we wear what we want – casting off the pressure of trends or outside opinions or anything other than our own taste – we curate a collection that reflects who we’ve decided to show the world.” I love that perspective! How would you describe your personal style? I try to wear what works for what I need to be that day. So I’d say my personal style is reflective of all my aspects of self. Sometimes very put-together! Other times not so much, but that’s okay.
Everyone knows you love going to the mall. What is your favourite mall in Canada? I love all malls! I don’t discriminate between any. But I will say that twice in a row I got sick at Yorkdale, which was heartbreaking. I’ve since reclaimed it – which I’m grateful for since I love it there – but I can’t go back to that Pickle Barrel, I will say that much.
Writing
Tell us about your old blog. What was it called and what did you write about? Why did you decide to stop publishing it? It was called “If They Can Do It…” and it was largely about wanting to be a writer, but also all the personal stuff I was going through at the time. It was, in a word, terrible. Not because it was badly written, but because I used it to showboat quite a bit and that’s never a good look. Especially since I wasn’t doing anything worth showboating over. That said, it was also probably terribly written.
What is the best piece of feedback you’ve ever received from an editor? My book editors were diligent in asking me why anyone should care about the pieces I wrote for the book – mainly, what universal truths could I include? How could I make the essays accessible to everyone? They urged me to see outside of my own experiences and perspectives, and I can’t stress how valuable and important that was. They’re the best.
Mental Health
How did spending time in therapy help you write a book? Therapy does a great job of helping you work through your personal history and your feelings and it helps you unpack why you think and act the way you do. And that’s super important when you’re going deep on formative life experiences. It’s super important regardless, but especially so when you need to give an honest and authentic account of particular events.
I appreciated your chapters about mental health and I hope you’ll inspire more people to be open about it. How did it feel to discuss your personal experience with drinking, anxiety and bipolar disorder? Well, thank you! I’ve written about all three before, and more than once, so I think revisiting them for the book wasn’t as difficult as it could’ve been because of that. So it felt good to be able to write about them again – to have a platform on which to try and have an honest conversation about those things. Which can also be scary, but that’s what therapy’s for.
How has social media affected your mental health? I don’t think I’d have a career without it, to be honest. And I certainly wouldn’t have some of the best friends that I do, since a lot of us met via Twitter. So my relationship with social media is largely positive. Because while it can be very stressful and very upsetting (to say the least), I’m also good with taking breaks if I need to. Plus, I get to type in all-caps about The Great British Bake-Off, and that’s always a dream.
