Search
-
March 19, 2019Writer at Work: Where I’m Writing From (On Dionne Brand, Black Earth Rising, and Writing with “Love”)
Books that change us challenge us and console us. They break our hearts, they make us think, but most of all, they make us see people as people. Aside from being a generalized and sentimental statement ...
-
March 19, 2019Joel Adam Struthers' Memoir Offers a Fascinating, Myth-Busting Account of the French Foreign Legion
The French Foreign Legion, a branch of the French army, is one of the most famous military organizations in the world. Joel Adam Struthers tells his story of six years as a legionnaire (and more specifically ...
-
March 21, 2019Writer at Work: A Book Is A Community
Yesterday, my first book of poems, Port of Being, was shortlisted for the 2019 BC and Yukon Book Prizes (BCBP), for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. I expected to feel happy but I feel disbelief. The ...
-
June 24, 2019Advice From Mentors Past
One of the most surprising things I’ve encountered since starting to talk publicly about my writing and my first book is how many people appreciate the fact that I mention the positive influence of ...
-
January 31, 2020Quick and Dirty on Communication and Inviting Writers to Do All the Things
It’s a beautiful thing when writers make money. It’s an incredible feeling to open up your email and see all the love, invites, and possible project collaborations. This influx is not constant, it ...
-
March 02, 2020Acknowledging Fear in Writing
“Don’t tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief’s wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear’s caul.” – Toni Morrison Fear.Fear of the first draft, fear of spiders, fear of ...
-
March 05, 2020Book Therapy: Shani Mootoo’s Polar Vortex
“The body is always in the moment. It doesn’t care if it was warmer or colder any other time. It’s concerned—a matter of survival, naturally—only with how it is in the present.”—Shani Mootoo, ...
-
December 12, 2019Book Therapy: Christy Ann Conlin’s Watermark
“It can always be worse.”-Christy Ann Conlin, Watermark When my grandmother’s memory started to go, she would occasionally become belligerent. The sweet woman I had grown up knowing, the one ...
-
March 21, 2020Trips Down Memory Lane: On Inhaling Old Notebooks
I’ve always envisioned Fall as the best season for fresh starts and rebirth, while Spring has always been a reflective season where I look back at previous months and years while documenting and acknowledging ...
-
April 06, 2020Love Letter to a Stranger in Saint Petersburg
I’ve been thinking since my last post about how to write a communal poetics while in isolation, while I can’t reach out and physically connect with the poetry community that’s been so dear to me ...
