This past Monday, I went to the Best Book Launch Ever for my friend Ariel Gordon’s book Treed: Walking in Canada’s Urban Forest. I laughed, I cried (thanks to Erna Buffie‘s beautiful, generous and true introduction). I ate tree, acorn, leaf cookies made by generous and talented Anita Daher. I pretended along with everyone else […]
Magical Juggling by Jennifer Farquhar Mother to three kids, one of whom is a night-nursing toddler. Half-time elementary school teacher. Squeezing in work late at night until my eyes burn, because there’s no other time to do it. Every single one of the readers here can match, if not trump, my busy-ness, am I right? […]
I’m in the midst of a physical and mental transformation. Don’t worry: I’m not getting plastic surgery or starting a religion. Instead, I’m figuring out how to eat in order to shrink. You see, over the past couple of years I’ve gotten a bit, well, chubby. Not grossly obese or unable to squeeze through doorways, but […]
It’s poetry month, and I’ve been doing NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month). Each morning, I grab my phone, check out the day’s prompt, ignore the prompt (usually) and then write a poem or three. Most of them are about my brother (big surprise) or somehow twist their way back to him, meaning, I suppose, that I’m working […]
J. and I took our show on the road last week and went to Alberta. We drove through crazy weather – freezing rain interspersed with blizzard – before popping out into sunshine. At a hobby farm outside Edmonton, we hunkered down and did a whole lot of reading, cooking, walking, and watching movies on a […]
Well, now. How’s everybody doing? A little bit of this? A touch of this? Yeah; I hear you. I’m not sure what to say. I could reiterate my own outrage; I could talk about fascism; I could point you to this excellent (and, yes, frightening) article by David Frum (uh huh, that David Frum, who […]
It’s been a week since my mom went home. I ended up driving her to Flin Flon – along with another woman stuck in The Pas because the plane couldn’t land on last Thursday’s icy tarmac – in order to catch her flight to Winnipeg, then on to Toronto. She made it home okay, if […]
I’m pretty pumped about Sunday – and I hope you are too. Normally my offline day, this Sunday I will be launching my first online course. Called Nine Simple Steps to a Solid Writing Practice, it’s one that I’ve poured my heart into and that, I hope, will serve many would-be writers (like you?) who […]
Last year, when Liz Howard won the Griffin Poetry Prize, she told the audience that writing saved her life. “[F]or me, poetry made life possible,” she said. I get this. I understand this a lot. Lately, things have not been easy for my family, and I’ve been at my mother’s. Before coming here, I was in […]
This week, writer Rea Tarvydas shares the songs that power her brand new short story collection. Read and give a listen! Music is a big deal for me as a writer. I use it in different ways. Sometimes it’s to condition me into a piece of writing and, in that instance, I listen before I […]