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![\"Steph](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/3666761_web1_Souvankham-Thammavongsa-Steph-Martyniuk.jpg\")
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Steph Martyniuk photo<\/p>\n
Souvankham Thammavongsa took boxing lessons while researching her novel.<\/p>\n
Thammavongsa launches Pick a Colour tonight at McNally Robinson Booksellers\u2019 Grant Park location, where she\u2019ll be joined in conversation by Lindsay Wong, author of The Woo Woo.<\/p>\n
Thammavongsa wrote Pick a Colour in six weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was really locked in. What was really important to me was the language and the flow of a single day. I set myself a really difficult parameter: one voice, one room, one day,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
That voice is the salon owner, Ning, and the day is spent in her nail salon, Susan\u2019s, up the street from Bird and Spa Salon, where she cut her teeth before leaving to start her own shop. (Bird and Spa featured in the story Mani Pedi, which appeared in How to Pronounce Knife and also featured a esthetician with a boxing background).<\/p>\n
Combining the sweet science and the daily grind of a salon was no small task for Thammavongsa.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are two very different worlds \u2026 and to bring them together and make it feel like they fit was difficult,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
To help incorporate elements of boxing into Pick a Colour, Thammavongsa, 47, stepped into the ring.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor a year-and-a-half, I took boxing lessons, technical boxing lessons. A lot of writers, when they do research for their novels, they get so excited, and rightly so \u2014 they\u2019re learning something new,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI worked really hard to make the story of the novel really shine, and not to bury it underneath everything I learned about boxing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ning works with Mai, Noi and Annie, who playfully spar with each other and take jabs at unknowing clients in an unnamed, non-English language. The character\u2019s memories of her time in the ring play into her emotionally guarded nature.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s that line, protect yourself at all times \u2014 it becomes her life philosophy in the nail salon,\u201d Thammavongsa says.<\/p>\n
Thammavongsa\u2019s poetic pedigree also helped shape the novel\u2019s narrative.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy poetry had always looked at small objects, or things that are considered ordinary. I make such an ordinary object feel like you\u2019ve never seen it before, or you\u2019re seeing it for the first time. The novel is built of these small, ordinary moments of work, like touching someone\u2019s hands, painting their nails, washing their feet, plucking hairs from their eyebrows or chin. It asks you to value these small, ordinary moments,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
For Thammavongsa, getting Ning\u2019s perspective just right proved one of the most important aspects of writing Pick a Colour.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t Pick a Colour<\/p>\n \u201cWhen an author is in control of their tools, the reader doesn\u2019t have to think about it, but for an author, on the other side, we think about it, obsess about it,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \u201cThe novel takes a look at point of view and perspective. Point of view is something you choose \u2014 it\u2019s very easy. But perspective is how you build the world through the eyes of the person who tells the story, and I feel like that\u2019s where the magic really comes through.\u201d<\/p>\n Thammavongsa felt the world of customer service was the ideal setting for exploration of perspective, taking a different tack than literature that uses professors, writers or artists to tell the story and steer the narrative.<\/p>\n \u201cBut this is just an ordinary person who wants to work, and we see her observe, think and opine with such precision. She\u2019s also an artist, a thinker, but she works in the world of a nail salon.\u201d<\/p>\n Exploring the depth of complexity of a retail worker stemmed in part from Thammavongsa\u2019s musings on her parents, who moved from a Lao refugee camp to Toronto when the author was an infant.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we think about knowledge, we think about reading books about people who\u2019ve been educated, formally educated. My parents are Lao refugees \u2014 they\u2019ve never been educated because there was a war in that country. The minute I walked into a kindergarten class, I had more education than my parents. I was thinking about their intelligence, and how it allows them to get through the day, the month, the year, the way in which they carry themselves to survive, that\u2019s an act of intelligence,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \n\t\tWinnipeg Free Press | Newsletter\n\t<\/p>\n \t\t\tDish<\/p>\n Every Second Friday<\/p>\n The latest on food and drink in Winnipeg and beyond from arts writers Ben Sigurdson and Eva Wasney.<\/p>\n \t\t\tSign up for Dish<\/a><\/p>\n \t\t The levity in Pick a Colour is also thanks to Thammavongsa\u2019s parents, who she says have an \u201cincredible sense of humour\u201d and the ability to find joy in any situation.<\/p>\n \u201cMy mom worked in a cake-making factory, and it\u2019s long hours,\u201d she says. \u201cMost people would not want to do that work and if they did, they would complain about that work, but when I asked my mom about that work, she said she\u2019s grateful that she gets to make this thing that will go out into the world on a day when someone is celebrating something special.<\/p>\n \u201cShe feels like she gets to participate in their joy in that way. That kind of thinking, that kind of intelligence, to me, it\u2019s just something I value so much.\u201d<\/p>\n ben.sigurdson@freepress.mb.ca<\/p>\n @bensigurdson<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t Ben Sigurdson Ben Sigurdson is the Free Press\u2018s literary editor and drinks writer. He graduated with a master of arts degree in English from the University of Manitoba in 2005, the same year he began writing Uncorked, the weekly Free Press drinks column. He joined the Free Press full time in 2013 as a copy editor before being appointed literary editor in 2014. Read more about Ben<\/a>.<\/p>\n In addition to providing opinions and analysis on wine and drinks, Ben oversees a team of freelance book reviewers and produces content for the arts and life section, all of which is reviewed by the Free Press\u2019s editing team before being posted online or published in print. It\u2019s part of the Free Press\u2018s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press\u2019s history and mandate<\/a>, and learn how our newsroom operates<\/a>.<\/p>\n
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Literary editor, drinks writer
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