Pack Animal Momentum: A Conversation with Emma Cohen and Emily Wood

Contemporary literature has a complicated relationship with in-person community. Even though writers have been sharing their work publicly for centuries at public readings—the earliest recorded salons go back to 15th century Italy—it’s not always an easy way to build an audience. It’s something of a rite of passage for an author to read to a near-empty room at least once in their career. And it’s not unusual to hear reading series organizers admit that it’s a struggle to attract interest from outside of the literary community.

Toronto’s Pack Animal reading series is working to change that. Created by Emma Cohen and Emily Wood, Pack Animal is an “experimental literary series interested in creating events for writers, artists, performers and readers to experience literature in vital and communal ways.” Cohen and Wood, who are both writers themselves, launched the series in 2022. The two friends, who met in university about ten years ago, were ambitious in their vision to create an alternative event experience that pushes the expectations of what a reading series can be.

The risk has paid off. Pack Animal has gained impressive momentum, growing into large-scale venues that literary events don’t typically cross into, like Toronto’s Revue Theatre, which seats over 230 people. The series doesn’t always work in the same space, and runs on an irregular schedule, to which Cohen and Wood credit its success. Rather than taking what they call a “rinse and repeat” approach, Pack Animal maintains a sense of unpredictability and spontaneity on all levels.

Cohen and Wood are comfortable embracing the intangible, and Pack Animal’s audience is responding. These nights are busy, with bustling rooms full of guests who are enrapt and ready to hear the works from writers like Stevie Manning, Tamara Faith Berger, and Jean Marc Ah-Sen, to name but a few.

After hearing about Pack Animal through another writer, who gushed that there was “something special going on” at these events, I was lucky enough to snap up a ticket for one of Pack Animal’s events at the Revue, which teased “ekphrastic practice” with readings by Jill Connell, Pony Nicole Herauf, Tia Glista, and more. Seeing people fill the seats of a movie theatre in support of a literary evening was exciting: there is indeed something special going on.

I spoke with Cohen and Wood about the city’s enduring fascination with Pack Animal, and how they balance their own writing ambitions while running a much talked about reading series. Intuition and instinct came up frequently throughout our discussion—qualities that Cohen and Wood both rely on across all their creative processes.

Liz Worth: When you started Pack Animal in 2022, did you expect to still be doing it four years later?

Emma Cohen: That's a good question. Being at this stage in our writing careers, and our careers in the arts in general, so much is up in the air. We didn't necessarily have a five year plan of what we envisioned it turning into. But I think that Emily and I have known each other for a really long time, and are lifelong collaborators, so I think we definitely anticipated it being an ongoing project, or hoped it would be.

Emily Wood: I didn't really know if people would care about the project. I remember us talking about it being long-term, but based on reception, in addition to your own efforts and time and resources. I feel like that was sort of the determining factor for me about whether it would be a long-term project or endeavour for us.

[W]e've always thought about Pack Animal as something with its own engine, and sense of momentum within itself.

Liz Worth: Pack Animal has so much momentum behind it, and that seems to be an exception to a lot of other literary events, unfortunately. I live in Hamilton now, and even having moved away from Toronto, I keep hearing about it out here.

Emma Cohen: It’s cool to hear that people outside Toronto know about it. It's been a goal of ours for a long time to take it outside of Toronto, and to program events in other cities, but we haven't been able to do that yet. But in terms of momentum, I think that it has shaped our lives in the city … It opened up the city to us and introduced us to a lot of writers. I think that it being such a social experience is also a big reason why there's a lot of momentum around it, because it's fuelled connections between people that have contributed to a sense of goodwill toward the community.

Emily Wood: I totally agree. People say that a lot, they're like, “Oh, Pack Animal seems to just have something that makes people excited.” When I think about why that's the case, I feel like it's because we've always thought about Pack Animal as something with its own engine, and sense of momentum within itself. We do think about events as a live thing, or a sort of ecosystem that we try to balance in order to create an experience that can outlive that one evening … We try to inject a lot of life and personality into it, and I think people have really responded to that effort.

EC: For each event we've put on, we've spent a lot of time thinking about how the writers relate to one another, how they are at various stages of their careers, but there's something about the engine of it that has this mysterious quality of being more than the sum of its parts, maybe. And I think that’s what we're really interested in.

There's so much that transpires at an event like this that makes it more than a bare-bones idea like, “These are the people that read, and these are the people that listen.” There’s more that’s transpiring in those spaces, which I think was always what we were trying to accomplish. It was like tapping into some sort of mysterious quality that people really respond to.

EW: Sometimes I feel like we think in, like, four dimensions or something. We always joke that we're a vibes-based organization.

LW: Sometimes working with friends can be challenging. Did you go into this with a plan to make sure your friendship remains intact?

EC: We're really lucky that we have a lot of overlap in terms of what we are interested in, in a literary sense, in the types of books that we want to read, the types of writers that we're interested in. We also have our own proclivities and interests that do differ from one another, but we both respect the other. That is maybe also an element in Pack Animal’s taste, in that we have this grounding point that we're always starting from. And any moments of friction in taste or style can be really valuable to the project.

EW: I don't really think it could have worked with anyone else. It’s such a gift to learn how to collaborate and move through conflict or difficulties in a partnership, and I always think that any point of conflict is an amazing opportunity to develop the language of your relationship more. We’re both very committed to each other, I think is the bottom line. We’re also dedicated to Pack Animal, and we're dedicated to our own writing careers, and I see that working in tandem.

LW: In terms of your own writing, it can be hard sometimes when you do something like this—like run a popular reading series—and the brand can start to overshadow your writing career. The same thing happens when people run presses, or literary magazines. Is that something you’ve run up against with Pack Animal?

EW: I have not published extensively yet, but there was this period of time where people would be like, “Oh my god, this event is so amazing. Are you guys writers? What do you do?” We were both kind of freaked out by that. We do it because we're also writers, and this is valuable for us.

EC: We are always writers first, in a sense. I think that we saw Pack Animal as a way to experience something that we really wanted to experience in the city, but also as a way to develop this secondary experience of entering into the world of writers via this programming.

I am also launching a literary magazine, Toronto Review, with some friends in the spring, and it is interesting to be having these other projects that are kind of functioning alongside writing ambitions. We want to have certain things happening in the city that I don't see happening, and it feels like the visionary aspect of creating a new project like Pack Animal is similar to the visionary elements of writing. I think it's more like these projects contribute to keeping the engine of the practice going for me.

EW: In the past, we've talked about how we're both staring at a brick wall or something, trying to write or submit things to a publication and for whatever reason it’s not working. You feel like, “Who’s listening to me? Who sees me?” Then we have an event, and something happens within that space that revitalizes you, like a kind of energy transfer between the people who come to the events, the readers, and us.

LW: Has hearing other readers read their work at your events started to influence the way you are writing?

EW: As a younger person trying to write, I started with poetry and playwriting, so my interest was very auditory and oral when considering work, but now I mostly write fiction. And I don't know if hearing other people read their work is what has influenced me as much as hearing the way that people can be received in a space. It's not the physical act of them reading, it's how people speak about the performances and what resonates for them. We try to program a lot of different styles and ways of thinking and writing. It’s more impactful to me to hear and see that there is an audience for everyone.

EC: There have been times where we've been really surprised by who has responded to what type of reader. For example, we had Ali Pinkney read; we’re both really big fans of her work. And the piece that she read was extremely heady, but people really responded to her work.

What’s been sort of a surprise is that a portion of our audience isn't necessarily invested in literature in the way that we are, but enjoy coming to the events and discovering something they might not normally expose themselves to. That's something that we've been excited by: that there are people who are viewing Pack Animal more as a social activity.

LW: It’s interesting to think about what works in a piece of writing when you hear it. There is a lot of pressure for authors to read their work aloud as part of promoting it. Is that something you think writers should be mindful of in the creation process?

EC: I don't think writing for a presumed event or audience is how I would approach a piece. You just never how things are actually going to unfold in a live event, and that's why it's so exciting. I do think that the performances that are the most successful are the ones that feel confident, and true to the writer's spirit and what they're trying to do with their work. I don’t think that it has to be tailor-made to be accessible performatively. Trying to reverse-engineer a piece can cause its own blockages.

EW: I agree. I think there is a way that honing one’s skills of performance is useful in that you can introduce people to your quote-unquote voice, or the texture of the way that you use language, or the shape of your stories. It's definitely a community-building skill as well as a career-building skill.

EC: In the past, we were often programming people without having ever met them, or seen them perform, or even known anyone who really knew about them that we could ask about. We were really going off of pure instinct … Maybe in some ways, the function of a reading series, for a writer in particular, is this opportunity to let people into your pocket of the world, your style, your taste, your creation, and then people become interested in the rest of your body of work outside of that moment.

Generally, people want to be reminded that they're human beings, and they exist in bodies, and are not just minds. They are not just readers, either: they can receive a performance.

LW: You're talking a lot about community and connection, and you mentioned earlier that some people who go to Pack Animal events are not necessarily the usual literary crowd. It's unusual for lit events to be bringing out new people from outside of the writing community—sometimes reading series end up being poets reading to other poets. You have an ideal situation—the power to break those insular tendencies. What is it about Pack Animal that’s working differently?

EC: I think in some ways it's part of the 4D programming that Emily was talking about, where we are always interested in programming a surprising lineup that may be bringing writers from different communities. And the event has a certain structure to it. There is a lot of time for there to be interactions and free zones that occur throughout the night that lends itself more to an experience.

When we were in our earlier 20s, and we were attending readings that we found to be a little bit stiff, we would leave and be like, “Okay, it feels like nothing really transpired at this event.” Our goal is to create a space for something to transpire for people beyond just literary engagement.

EW: Generally, people want to be reminded that they're human beings, and they exist in bodies, and are not just minds. They are not just readers, either: they can receive a performance. I spend a lot of time in academia, and the literary institution, I think, wants to establish itself as an Institution where, as a writer who wants to be a serious writer, you sort of put on this affectation of a detached intellectual. But people need to feel, too. When we gather in a room we have to actually feel like people.

EC: We're so online, too. At an event, you just get to be in a room and look at other people and feel you're in an environment. I think Pack Animal occupies a space between this institutional, academic world, but it doesn’t go as far as a club night, a pure party. It is this middle ground. There are also all of these networks and webs of connections of people that you potentially could know, and I think that that kind of level of acquaintanceship is something that I felt was really missing post-pandemic.

LW: Do you think that people are seeking out more community offline at events like yours?

EC: I think it's more fun and thrilling to go out into the world. There is only so much satisfaction you can get online.

LW: With the momentum that Pack Animal has had, is there ever temptation to do events at a greater frequency?

EC: Honestly, I think that the major thing that we run up against is the financial element. We have been a self-supporting organization. There is a world in which we would love to do a more regularly programmed series. We always pay our writers, and we have expenses when it comes to running the events. It also does take quite a lot of work on our end, and we’re both working various jobs.

EW: The other consideration is: do we try to professionalize this more than we already have, when we're thinking about our day-to-day lives? It has its drawbacks, but it could be amazing in many other ways. Do we want Pack Animal to be one of our jobs? I don't think we’ve fully figured that out yet. That's just a whole different game.

EC: We really try to follow our impulses of what we feel is exciting, and so there's a level to which we don't want to be beholden to someone else’s deliverables. Part of what we're interested in doing is following our intuition about writers and events that we feel really keen to explore. I think we’re at an inflection point.

LW: It sounds like it's such a labour of love, and that was something that I was curious about as well. It sounds like you’re cautious about feeling obligated to Pack Animal, rather than staying inspired by it.

EW: I never want to do an event that feels like an obligation. We have had so many conversations in the past where we're like, “All right, we're bored of what we're doing right now.” How do we pump it up? How do we inject something that's exciting for us to pursue into the project?

EC: It doesn't make sense for us to be doing a rinse and repeat event. We really treat each event almost like an individual project. We spend so much time crafting the vision for each of our events that that is what makes us feel excited about it. I don’t necessarily think that that was how we were going to be running it at the beginning. We've challenged ourselves.

For example, launching Stevie Manning’s Shampoo Boy was a big challenge for us. We were bringing in Eileen Myles, who we both respect to a crazy degree. We’re handling this superstar writer while also putting on a book launch for Stevie and it was a whole new experience for us. Or when we hosted Young Kim, and she flew in internationally. Every time we do this, we’re asking ourselves, how can we put all the pieces together to make this event feel thrilling in the way that we know it can be?

LW: You've used the word “intuition” a lot today, and I'm curious about this in terms of how that shows up at the event. For people who haven’t been to Pack Animal before, what does that look like? Where will they see your intuitive process at play?

EW: The way that we like to program is when something becomes a little bit shiny; the idea sort of starts to sparkle, and we follow it. Our approach is less programmatic in the sense of checking off a list of readers. Instead, it’s more like, where do we want to take ourselves based on this dream of what we would like to see happen at Pack Animal?

EC: Yeah, the sparkle, that is such a good way to put it. It really is like a twinkle in our eye of whatever is intriguing to us. Sometimes an opportunity presents itself, or we meet different people and surprising things come of that and we decide to see where that can go. I think that our irregularity is going to be related to the longevity of the project, because the only people we are answering to is ourselves. We can be aligned with what we want to do.

[W]ithin a piece of writing, that sense of attention, at least for me, feels like something you can’t always trace. You don’t know where that impulse is coming from, but it is very exciting. We are using the same sort of muscles for our writing, and for Pack Animal.

LW: Is this intuitive process also tied to your writing?

EW: Yes.

EC: I do think that we both have a spiritual, mystical view on our writing practices, and try to be very attuned to where our attention is drawing us. I think that relates to the type of work that we focus on in writing. Even within a piece of writing, that sense of attention, at least for me, feels like something you can’t always trace. You don’t know where that impulse is coming from, but it is very exciting. We are using the same sort of muscles for our writing, and for Pack Animal.

EW: We're both pretty interested in things that are kind of unconscious in ourselves and in our own work, and then also how that translates to various desires and impulses. In the same way, we only do an event when we're inspired, basically. We both work from a dream space, where there is something there that is calling us or drawing us toward it. I think that’s how these things have their own pulse.

LW: What are your goals moving forward from here?

EC: We're both working on larger writing projects right now. That's also been cool, because that's something we're going through together at the same time, which is exciting. I feel like I need to have the social world as a big element of my life, and so having the balance between writing and Pack Animal to offset that is important. I guess my goal is to have the ability to balance the two things.

EW: We've been doing Pack Animal for so long, and throughout that time, I haven't felt comfortable or willing to foreground myself in my own work. I think my personal goal is to get back to that. Pack Animal is so vital as this bold, courageous project that people respond to, and I think becoming more holistically integrated with that kind of energy in my own writing life is really my goal.