Late Spring 2020, I began taking photos and shooting short videos in response to rolling bouts of extreme anxiety. It didn’t take long for me to discover that closely observing nature was the best way to calm my frazzled, distressed brain. Week after week, for over a year, I kept up the practice, occasionally sharing some of the images via social media. The other day I decided to dump a bunch of my favourite moments from that experiment into iMovie and wound up with sixteen minutes of what I call “everyday magic.” Nearly all the photos and clips were shot …
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Cover reveal! Introducing the beautiful new cover of the upcoming paperback edition of my memoir. Notice anything different? Normally, the paperback release of a book happens about a year after the hardcover’s original publication date. Sometimes, the paperback’s cover requires a tweak, an update, or even a complete makeover from the hardcover’s dust jacket. And, occasionally, in extremely rare cases, the book’s original title is changed. Wait, what? My memoir, originally and for-the-moment titled Daughter of Family G : a memoir of cancer genes, love and fate was published late September, 2019. At that time, I went on a cross-Canada …
A few months ago, (which seems like a lifetime ago now) fellow writer Dean Jobb asked me if I’d be willing to give a talk at the University of King’s College in Halifax titled: Why I Write. I happily accepted the invitation and looked forward to spending a Sunday afternoon in June with the students and faculty of the King’s Creative Non-Fiction MFA Residency to discuss the ins and outs of the writing life. Of course we all know what happened next. But rather than cancel the lecture, we carried on virtually—the students and faculty from their respective homes, and …
A slip of paper I stuck in a book three weeks ago as a bookmark (in Elizabeth McCracken’s excellent short story collection: “Thunderstruck”) brought me to tears this morning when I rediscovered it. The simple phrase – “Work together as a society” was the result of an artistic exercize that I gave my Teen Writing Academy students this past summer at the Ross Creek Centre for the Arts. During the two week intensive, I challenged the five writers in the Academy to write down 50 things they fear. They, in turn invited their peers to add their fears to the …
Please note: The paperback edition of my memoir, Before My Time will be available in the US and Canada, as well as internationally, March 30, 2021. (The Canadian hardcover edition was originally titled Daughter of Family G.) Before My Time can be ordered through your favourite local bookstore or online. Here are a couple of direct links to online retailers — CANADA: Chapters-Indigo USA: Barnes and Noble BEFORE MY TIME – a reading guide Dear Readers, I’m incredibly grateful for the support I’ve had from book clubs and reading groups over the years. Knowing that you’ve taken the time to …
How’s your summer been? Mine’s been busy in the best possible sense. When I wasn’t in the garden with the bees, or preparing for my youngest to head off to university, or teaching at the Ross Creek Centre for the Arts, I was recording the audiobook version of Daughter of Family G. I knew from the start that it was going to be an interesting journey, especially when we had to enlist the help of two cast iron ravens to steady the stand for the i-Pod I’d be using to read the manuscript. (The fuzzy blue blanket we’d draped over …