TraumaTag

March Writer in Residence Eden Boudreau Talks About Battling Rape Culture in Her Searing Memoir, Crying Wolf

It's a grim reality that women who experience sexual violence still face massive hurdles being believed and supported. When a woman deviates from the expectations of a "perfect victim"—whether in terms ...

Read an Excerpt from Film Critic Thom Ernst's Spellbinding & Heartbreaking Memoir of His Childhood

Thom Ernst, known for his role hosting TVO's beloved Saturday Night at the Movies for nearly 10 years, has carved a space for himself as a respected film critic and thinker. But long before he was ...

"How easy to let go, to simply slip away" Excerpt from Susan Mockler's Powerful Memoir, Fractured

An instant can change a life. Psychotherapist Susan Mockler was heading to a mountain vacation when the car she was in struck a moose – a moment of impact that would alter her body, her relationships, ...

"I Had Never Heard His Voice, and Yet I Knew it Right Away" Read an Excerpt from Silence to Strength: Writings and Reflections on the Sixties Scoop

For any parent, the idea of having a child removed from you without your consent is the stuff of nightmares. But for many Indigenous families, that nightmare became a reality in communities across Canada. ...

Vancouver's Lisa Gaston Wins 2021 CBC Poetry Prize for Her Heartbreaking & Powerful Piece "James"

Good news comes in threes, as this morning we had a third literary prize announcement of the day, with CBC Books announcing that Lise Gaston of Vancouver has won the 2021 CBC Poetry Prize for her poem, ...

"Human Justice Still Demands It" Read an Excerpt from Die Walking by Obadiah M, an Raw, Anonymous Account of the Rwandan Genocide

Die Walking: A Child's Journey Through Genocide (House of Anansi Press) by Obadiah M. tells the story of the Rwandan genocide through the perspective of one incredibly brave man who experienced its horrors ...

"I Don’t Think I’ve Ever Been More Vulnerable in My Life" Brent LaPorte on His Raw, Moving Memoir & His Father's Difficult Legacy

CW: abuse, suicide, substance abuseSometimes, even questions without answers need to be voiced — to be heard and acknowledged, if only as a cry of the heart. Such is Brent LaPorte's wise, difficult, ...

Red Light, Green Light: how to actually listen to your body while writing

It’s the last week of Careful Inventory! I’m very grateful to Open Book for all the time they have afforded to me in this residency. Today is the penultimate post, building on last Friday’s piece, ...

Writing violence (again)

On violence and trauma and repetition...When I was nineteen, I went to dinner at a friend’s, and afterwards, her father invited us all upstairs to see his attic art studio.There were so many canvasses ...

Writing Through Trauma Is Writing Through Forgetting

A few days ago, I finished writing a short story. A new short story. Because my fiction is drawn from my life, I journalled first, did a freewrite, and then outlined the first half of the story to nudge ...