VIDEO: The Beggar's Garden

Michael Christie is obsessed with the unwanted. His Giller Prize and Writers' Trust Award-nominated book The Beggars Garden is a linked collection of short stories with a common theme of redemption and unlikely relationships. A grandfather lovingly leaves food and clothing in dumpsters so his homeless grandson will find them and feel lucky, a banker who befriends a homeless man because of the emptiness in his own life.

While Christie travels through gritty urban landscapes to find his characters, he grew up in a middle class home in Thunderbay, Ontario where his father is a lawyer.

Christie says his father is "shocked" that he hasearned a place on the Giller long list?

Christie spent most of his life perfecting skate board moves on the streets of Thunder Bay and then working in Vancouvers Downtown Eastside in homeless shelters and as a mental health outreach worker. Only recently did he turn to writing.

But he says, skateboarding and writing are surprisingly similar pursuits. Solitary and self-motivated, he says "skateboarding prepared me for writing."

His many years living at street level with the poor and the drug-addicted on Vancouver's Downtown Eastside are combined witha psychology degree.

"Theres a lingering idea that people who are in poverty are serving some kind of penance and are somewhat deserving of the spot theyre in. It lingers in our culture and I think its a dangerous idea," he says.

"To think that you couldnt end up doing more drugs than youd planned on or having more depression than maybe you can handle, or having less money than you can earn is deluded I think we all could be there."

Christie says he identifies with the disenfranchised.

"Charles Dickens wrote Oliver Twist and Great Expectations because he knew that he could have been a beggarhe could have been in an orphanage and living on the street. He experienced poverty very early in his life."

The Giller short-list will be announced on Oct. 4.