Playing horsey with ones kids doesn’t usually result in a trip to Europe.

But for English professor and author Thomas Wharton, Horsey – a short story loosely based on his own experiences almost two decades ago as an at-home dad – recently earned him the Cécile E. Mactaggart Travel Award for Narrative Writing (formerly known as the Mactaggart Writing Award). The prize for the annual competition, which alternates between faculty and students in the Faculty of Arts, is $12,000 to be used towards a trip of Wharton’s choosing.

Cécile Mactaggart, benefactor of the award, established the competition in 1999 as a means of encouraging others to experience her own passions – traveling and writing. This seems fitting for Wharton, an accomplished novelist who has just released his fifth book, The Fathomless Fire. The novel is the second in his Perilous Realm fantasy trilogy for young adults. With the third book of the trilogy already in the final stages of creation, Wharton has begun research for his next piece, which will be helped greatly by the Mactaggart prize.

“I’ve been working on a book for a while that’s set in a contemporary version of Atlantis. I’m fascinated by that myth, and I thought I would like to visit some of the places that are associated with [it], for example Greece – Athens – and if possible one of the Mediterranean islands – Thera – that is now associated with the myth of Atlantis.”

The award will allow Wharton to travel around these areas, and hopefully to bring along his wife and one or two of his three children, now aged 10, 16 and 20. Greece is a long way from Peace River, the location of Wharton’s at-home dad days. The inspiration for his Mactaggart story came from a real-life dads’ club, comprised of Wharton and a few other at-home dads in the area.

While Wharton’s experiences took place quite some time ago, his story takes place in the present and deals with contemporary worries. The oil sands, layoffs, the economy and changing parental and gender roles are a few of the issues discussed by the dads in Horsey.

“I was thinking about the kinds of issues today and how they might affect somebody who is a new dad bringing up a little child,” he explains.  “It’s a scary time in the world for lots of reasons.  I have these same worries myself. I worry a lot about the way the world is going.”

Contemporary issues like these aren’t so disconnected from the Atlantis myth, with the number of natural disasters that the world has witnessed recently.  Wharton notes that “all over the world there are places that are threatened by rising seas. There’s all sorts of places a person could go [for] inspiration for a book about Atlantis, even Japan with the tsunami.”

Wherever he ends up traveling is sure to lead to an interesting experience, and to assist in his craft. Wharton notes that traveling helps with writing, but not always in the most obvious ways. “I’ve found that I’ll go somewhere and my creativity will be stimulated by the new surroundings and culture, and I’ll take a lot of notes but it may take years for that to sink down and come back up as something I can write about.”

Wharton will celebrate the release of The Fathomless Fire with a reading and signing at Greenwoods’ Bookshoppe on Wednesday, February 1 at 7 p.m. For more information visit www.greenwoods.com.

Related links:
Horsey – Thomas Wharton’s winning story (pdf)