Brett Popplewell writes journalism by day, and fiction by night. For him, being a reporter and fiction writer come hand-in-hand.
“9:00 to 5:00, I’m writing journalism. Evenings and weekends I write fiction,” he said. “There is no real juggling process.”
The 2006 Carleton graduate transferred from political science to journalism in his second year at Carleton after the successful publication of his fictional comic book, The MISadventures of Bully-Boy and Rumour Girl.
“When [the comic] came out, I realized quickly that there is a lot of power to the published word. You can do a lot with it,” he said.
Popplewell originally wrote the story when he was 18 or 19.
“It all goes back to when I was in high school,” he said. “I wasn’t a bully. I wasn’t bullied. I wasn’t picked on or anything, but I was just a bystander.”
The Ottawa native began a student initiative called STAMP (Stand Together Against the Mistreatment of People) after a Grade 9 girl in his school stopped eating as a result of a schoolyard attack.
“About 12 individuals swarmed the girl, and there were almost 200 kids looking on,” he said. “But no one would say anything or speak up when the police started asking what had gone on.”
In an attempt to get rid of what he calls the “bystander factor” he wore a purple ribbon.
The ribbon symbolized that he was a “rat.” He would stand up and tell a teacher if he saw or heard about a fight.
As the initiative gathered momentum, Popplewell was asked to speak at schools about his anti-bullying campaign.
“When I got invited to elementary schools to talk to kids, I realized that I’m actually a pretty boring person,” he joked. “I can’t keep their attention for more than two minutes.”
So he wrote the first Bully-Boy comic book. It held the message that kids can really make a difference in their school by deciding what is cool, and standing up against bullying.
The comic was published during Popplewell’s first year at Carleton, with funding from the United Way.
The second edition of the comic came out in 2004. It was printed pro bono by the Ottawa Citizen.
His arrangement with the Citizen was that it would pay to print the comic, but Popplewell would have to distribute it.
“We had to set up a distributing company,”
Popplewell said. “That’s how Feathertale began.”
Feathertale has grown since then from a distributing company to a literary magazine published on an annual schedule and disturbed by large companies such as Chapters.
The magazine, the Feathertale Review, is funded primarily through his Bully-Boy comic, whose third edition was released Feb. 27.
But the literary magazine did not get on its feet until after Popplewell graduated. For its first year or so of existence, Feathertale was a website where Popplewell published work mainly by himself, his friends and other journalism students.
When he first launched Feathertale.com, Popplewell printed off about 200 flyers with a monkey on them that said, “If you want to get published, submit here.” He went into the tunnels at midnight and plastered the posters all over campus.
“They were obviously ripped down by staff and custodians within hours,” he said. “But that’s how we got our first submissions.”
As he was writing his final exams in 2006, Popplewell put the wheels in motion to put out the first Feathertale Review.
“I worked on it over the summer,” he said. “I was working at the Canadian Press in Toronto at the time and I was mapping out the magazine in my evenings.”
The magazine came out Sept. 2006.
Rick Taylor, Carleton fiction workshop instructor, taught Popplewell when he was a fourth-year student.
Taylor described Popplewell as a “class leader” with lots of positive ideas.
“Sometimes if people try to bring humour into the workshop, others try to bring it down because it’s not ‘cool,’ ” he said. “Humour is not as cool as angst.”
But Popplewell brought well-written humour to the class.
Popplewell said he hopes to keep the review going and publish work by authors locally, nationally and around the world.
Already, the magazine has contributors from as far away as Ho Chi Minh city and Venice.
Popplewell is now a reporter for the Toronto Star and editor of the Feathertale Review.
He described the magazine as humorous and edgy, a magazine he said is akin to the illegitimate love child of MAD Magazine and the New Yorker.