Last spring, and earlier, in the previous winter and fall, I wrote some poems about my brother. One came in the night, in a tent, camped on the rocky shore of the arm of Simonhouse Lake that leads into Second Cranberry as J. and I were pushing into wilderness on a canoe trip. The next […]
In Calgary, this past spring, I had the real pleasure of reading Leo Brent Robillard‘s fourth novel, The Road to Atlantis. The publisher had asked me to blurb it, which means to give it a tidbit of praise they can use on the cover, and I’m usually careful with these things so I didn’t agree until I’d […]
Last spring, I had the great privilege of being mentored by the poet Jan Zwicky at the Sage Hill Writing Experience, along with seven other extraordinary writers. For those two weeks, I sifted through a manuscript-in-process about my great-great-grandparents’ 19th-century migration from present-day St. Catharines, up the Niagara escarpment, to Manitoulin Island. Along the way, […]
Me! This morning the phone rang and a wonderful woman from down south in Winnipeg told me I’d won, actually won, and FIRST PRIZE at that, the Prairie Fire Fiction contest! Holy crap, I think I said! Not very genteel but, you know, as a writer you send off a lot of stuff. Submit, submit, […]