Check out our interview with Dan Gawthrop, the author of "Cutting Edge."

What was your inspiration behind your most recent book?

For those who assume that Cutting Edge was inspired by the global phenomenon of “Heated Rivalry,” it’s important to note that I completed the first draft just three days after the TV series debuted in Canada. So that was just good timing. What actually inspired the book was the story of a community-based gay men’s hockey team (the Cutting Edges) that I helped get off the ground three decades ago. A friend and I started this club so we could create a safe place for men like us to play one of the world’s most homophobic sports. Since then it had evolved into a much larger, more celebratory association for all queer folk and our allies—one of many such organizations across North America that sprung up after 1994. Because our very existence defied cultural narratives about hockey as a high-masculinity sport played only by straight cis men, our story then became an opportunity for a deeper examination of masculinity, sexuality and gender in the game over the decades.

What does Reading Rainbow mean to you?

It means embracing the entire canon of gay/queer literature and honouring the best of our writing from its very beginnings (Wilde, Rimbaud, Proust and Genet), not just the best of the latest in queer writing (Billy-Ray Belcourt, Bryan Washington). Yes, we should celebrate the new worlds that contemporary queer writers create. But to understand where we’re going, we need to know where we’ve come from, so Reading Rainbow means educating ourselves in the literary work about queer existence that encompasses our entire history.

Why do you feel representation of a variety of people is so important when it comes to writing books?

Focussing on the same kinds of people in all of one’s work might indicate a degree of expertise in the author (“Write what you know!”), but it can also grow tiresome in its sameness. The ability to represent a variety of people, and do so convincingly, not only suggests a greater degree of talent or versatility in the writer; it invites more empathy in the reader for different perspectives and ways of life, one of the main reasons we write. Especially when we’re telling queer stories: the more variety there is in the characters, the greater the understanding we can create between different peoples.

Tell us a little more about the book and why you decided to write it.

Apart from the origin story of the hockey team from which the book got its title, the purpose of Cutting Edge was to examine the cultural evolution of the game of hockey from its origins as a brutally macho, misogynistic and homophobic sport into the rainbow game it is today: a sport with a women’s professional league where no one cares about player sexuality, and a sport where, at the recreational level, trans players have invigorated a safe space that was once the exclusive domain of gay men, teaching us anew what it means to be a true ally. I also wrote it to give the National Hockey League a kick in the butt as the last bastion of homophobia, the only Big Four pro sport in North America that has yet to produce an openly gay player. Once “Heated Rivalry” entered the picture, I had to explore that as well.

What can fans expect from your book?

Fans can expect a brutally honest look at the toxic masculinity that made the game such an ugly, terrible place for gay men to be, a game that still has some way to go before it’s truly inclusive and safe at all levels. But there’s also a lot of humour in this book. As well as the joy of the game itself when it is truly a diverse and welcoming environment, there are also hilarious moments of contact with the mainstream hockey world—including an episode where I rhapsodized in the mainstream media about the beauty of Vancouver Canucks “Russian Rocket” superstar Pavel Bure, and the feathers I ruffled in the hockey world with this subject during the Canucks’ 1994 run to the Stanley Cup.

What's up next for you in the bookish world?

My seven books thus far are all very different, their only common denominator being a focus on some particular social or political issue. So I can only promise that the next one will have nothing to do with hockey. I’ve only published one novel so far, and I might go back there. In the meantime, however, I am open to offers to serve as a communications consultant for any NHL player who’s itching to come out of the closet.