Following Sea washes into the wider world in one week’s time, and we’ll be celebrating its arrival at McNally-Robinson Booksellers in Winnipeg. I’m both excited and nervous and need to get my hair cut (and I hate getting my hair cut…) Bloggers who are reviewing and writing about the book have been asking me questions […]
Faith
Lately I’ve been thinking about faith. It’s hard not to when this winter has built itself so tightly around us, with record-breaking cold (-36 with the wind chill today) and a lot of snow for our place in the world. The other night, though, I had a dream that the red-winged blackbirds had returned. I […]
Thaw
A few years ago, my shoulder froze. At the time, I said I’d write about it someday but I haven’t, not until now. Now, my other shoulder is acting up, the right one, the one that helps me move my dominant hand and that’s, you know, alarming. A frozen shoulder is a very strange thing. […]
Cover Reveal!
I am blessed to have an incredibly talented and creative mother. If you’ve listened to the first lesson in my course about establishing a strong writing practice (set as a free preview lesson today so you can, if you like), you’ll know that she started painting to save her own life, following a devastating head-on […]
Scholarship Announcement!
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 […]
Looking Back, Looking Forward
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 […]
Christmas Town!
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 […]
Putting Down Roots
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 […]
Doubt
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 […]
Deep Dive
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 […]