I am thrilled to announce the first scholarship recipient for my upcoming online course, Writing Teaches Writing: Mohamad Kebbewar. Born and raised in Aleppo, Mohamad Kebbewar was educated and spent half his life in Canada. Since the start of the Syrian War he has found solace in writing. He recently published a chapbook with JackPine […]
Ah, 2018. As the year comes to a close I’m considering what it’s meant for me. I’ll remember it as the one during which my husband and I found our forever-home, where my mother nearly died the day after we moved in (but didn’t, thank the stars!). It’ll also be the year that I got up […]
In honour of the vaulted ceiling in our newish-to-us house (we were away for Christmas last year so didn’t have a tree), J. and I put up an 11-foot pine bought at the nearly tree lot. I’ve been spending some lovely evenings knitting beside its twinkling branches. That’s to help me calm down, since I […]
When J. and I first moved into this house, as autumn crept into winter, we started feeding the birds and thinking about gardens. As soon as the weather cooperated, we carved out a small area of grass, ordered some soil and, as they say in England, got stuck in. We bought a selection of native […]
It’s been a wacky couple of weeks. J. and I both sick with the cold from h, e, double hockey sticks. A lump on Mowat’s back that the vet determined to be a tumour that had to be cut out and sent for further testing (still waiting for results). Then, because he’s Mowat (the dog […]
In the Whiteshell last weekend, at the gorgeous and oh-so-welcoming Falcon Trails Resort, I wrote with eleven other women during the Wild Writing in the Boreal retreat Donna Besel and I co-taught. I went a bit wild, too – thanks to a singalong, fantastic company, and too much homemade Hutterite Colony wine… Lucky for me, that […]
I’ve been thinking about fun lately. Seems strange, given the state of the world. Ugh. But something has shifted in me (if you’re a regular reader, you’ve probably read that before… insert self-deprecating chuckle here…) Maybe it’s the result of the last few years, learning over and over again how fragile life is, how short. […]
My brain has been a free-wheeling swirl of colour and ideas lately. Not sure why. Seems, though, like I’m constantly jotting ideas into my notebook – for visual art, fabric art (I’m learning how to crochet while also playing with needle-felting…), stories, projects to try to get up and running, new classes to launch…. Maybe […]
Last Friday night seems so long ago. Since then, I’ve been catching what I can of the events at our city’s extraordinary writers’ festival and also trying to negotiate the rising, rollicking tides of anger I feel at what’s happening in the U.S. (see my Twitter feed)… Looking back, last Friday seems like a respite, […]
This is a super-fast blog post in anticipation of my night in the haunted mansion tomorrow (aka The New Fantasmagoriana at Dalnavert House)… if you can’t come (starts at 4:30, tickets at the door) and you don’t hear from me ever again you’ll know that I’ve become a) lost in an oil painting, b) dragged […]