Q: Why did you want to write about your hometown in Prodigals (Latitude 46 Publishing, 2025)?
A: I know I’m hardly the first writer to use my hometown as a setting for a fictional story. I came upon this totally by accident, though. When I set out to “become” a writer in my early twenties, I was trying to latch onto anything except where I grew up. And that’s not because I had negative feelings about Sault Ste. Marie – I just hadn’t processed anything about my experiences there.
My roots in northern Ontario aren’t that deep, but they don’t exist anywhere else. My family moved there shortly before I turned ten years old. The next decade of my life shaped the way I see the world. I wouldn’t be who I am without the “Soo.”
Prodigals didn’t start out as a story about one specific place. It took a few drafts before I realized that I was channeling something bred into me. As the play evolved through workshops and rehearsals, I let the references get more specific. But, while I do mention Algoma Steel and Roberta Bondar, I’d like to think that it’s the type of humour, the characters’ uncertainty about themselves, and their anxious responses to the world “out there” that make this a Sault Ste. Marie story.
As a writer, I think it’s a gift to have complicated feelings about your hometown. There’s a poem that nails this uneasy fondness. “In Defense of Small Towns” by Oliver de la Paz starts with “When I look at it, it’s simple, really. I hated life there.” but then goes on to detail the narrator’s deep affection for his past:
I’m still in love. And when I wake up, I watch my son yawn,
and my mind turns his upswept hair into cornstalks
at the edge of a field. Stillness is an acre, and his body
idles, deep like heavy machinery. I want to take him back there,
to the small town of my youth and hold the book of wildflowers
open for him, and look. I want him to know the colors of horses,
- “In Defense of Small Towns” by Oliver De La Paz (read here)
Now that I have my own family, I’ve taken them to the Soo and shown them how the city has changed from the one I remember. We’ve eaten in the new restaurants and I’ve told them stories about my old bands playing in concert venues that no longer exist. The differences will grow deeper as I get older and live elsewhere. But that only encourages me to write more about the place I knew.
Prodigals by Sean Minogue (Latitude 46, 2025).
About Prodigals:
When a big-city dreamer from a small northern Ontario city returns to his hometown to testify in a murder trial, he faces old uncovered wounds in his circle of friends and discovers that his missed opportunities are more than just regrets.
About Sean Minogue:
Sean Minogue has written for film, television, and theatre. His stories, poetry, and essays have appeared in Lithub, ARC Poetry Magazine, The Algomian, Maudlin House, THIS Magazine, Full Stop, and The Globe and Mail. Turnstone Press just published his debut novel, Terminal Solstice. Sean’s acclaimed play, Prodigals, premiered as a feature film in 2017. Latitude 46 Publishing is releasing it as a book in August 2025. Sean lives in Toronto.