John Cullen has an eclectic resume that reads something like this: semi-professional curler, stand-up comedian, teacher and podcaster. With the release of his new book, Curling Rocks! Chronicles of The Roaring Game, due out on October 14, he can add author to the list.
Ahead of his event at this year’s Litfest, Edify talked with him about the changing sport, the Olympics and why curling is inherently funny.
Edify: You talk about your book filling a gap in the market for curling books. When did you realize you could be the one to do that?
John Cullen: I probably realized it a long time ago. There’s a gap in curling media, period. Take the Toronto Blue Jays. There are more people covering the Toronto Blue Jays — by a lot — than there are people covering the entire sport of curling. Almost every piece of curling media has been directed at curlers, and I’ve always thought, ‘What’s a way that I can get people who don’t like curling to care about curling?’
I actually first pitched this book five years ago, banking on that possibility, and I got pretty close with Douglas and McIntyre, who eventually published it. But we just couldn’t get it over the finish line. And then I did a podcast called Broomgate, which was very popular. It won some prestigious awards. It was the No. 1 podcast in Canada for a few weeks. It was in the top 10 for a couple months. It was like, let’s take this curling story and make it into something that people who know nothing about curling would care about. And it showed that there is an audience for curling stuff.
Edify: How did you land on an essay format?
Cullen: I thought it would be the most interesting. It’s almost like an album, where, if there’s a song you don’t like, then you can just skip it. It doesn’t mean you’re going to hate all the other songs. I thought that if a chapter feels too dense for a non-curler, there’s another chapter with a completely different subject right around the corner.
Most curling books are either a biography of a player, a memoir by a player or a strategy guide. They’re all telling one continuous story. I thought, What if a curling book wasn’t like that? What if it was all over the place and resembled more of a humour book than just a traditional sports book?
Edify: Do you have a favourite essay?
Cullen: I wrote a chapter that I thought would be funny to write, but I wasn’t thinking of it as something that was particularly gripping. And then basically everybody who pre-read the book — the publishers, the editor, people who don’t know that much about curling — they’ve all latched on to that chapter, which then made it my favourite. It’s called ‘No, You Will Not Make the Olympics In Curling,’ because that was how people would always make fun of curling, saying, “It’s a bunch of guys smoking and drinking, and sweeping a rock. It’s not a real sport.”
Then curling got into the Olympics, which made curlers really start to look like athletes. If you look at curlers now, they’re all ripped. People are dedicating their entire lives to it in a way that they weren’t doing even 20 to 30 years ago.
The chapter is sort of a defence of curling, but in a funny way that connects with people and really resonates with people.
Edify: How much humour is mixed in?
Cullen: I would humbly suggest it’s very funny. Curling is an inherently funny sport. It just is. It feels very Canadian. There’s lots of different countries that play the sport, but when you watch it being played, it feels very small-town Canadian — very quaint. I definitely leaned into that, and I was not worried, thinking, “Oh am I going too far? Am I making this funnier than it should be? Or trying too hard?”
I try to make the book as accessible as possible for people who don’t know anything about curling. I’m hoping I’m going to win them over with jokes.
John Cullen will be talking about his new book as part of LitFest on Oct. 17 at 7 p.m. Curling Rocks! Chronicles of The Roaring Game is available from your local bookseller.
This interview was edited for brevity and clarity.
