The Laurence Prize and Lineage

As a young woman living in Peterborough, Ontario, I never would have thought that one day I’d move to Margaret Laurence’s home province of Manitoba. If a fortune teller had also muttered in my ear that I’d win a prize named after her for my second novel, I might have been skeptical too (yet also […]

Poetry and PPE

I’ve been writing a lot lately – that’s what happens when you commit to pick up the pen pretty much every day, for at least twenty minutes. Some fiction (one of the prompts that I gave in one of my live-streaming sessions through my Write Ramble Facebook group was to write about mud and that […]

What Happened When I Tried to Turn My Life into a Novel

I spent over a decade working on my book. “Working” may be the wrong word: I spent over a decade trying to make the book work. I only actually worked on it for the equivalent of a year during that time. The reason for this long, languishing creation period was simple: I wasn’t writing honestly. […]

Read Canadian.

Private messages from readers who loved This Has Nothing To Do With You keep coming to me through text and email and private message, and it’s really a thrill. I’m very thankful, but along with expressing my gratitude I usually respond by asking if they could please go public with this praise, in order to […]

Happy Book Birthday, THNTDWY!

Today is the first book birthday for This Has Nothing To Do With You. By which I mean: as of today, September 7th, my second novel is officially out in the world! You can walk into your favourite book store and (hopefully) find it on a shelf. If it isn’t there, you can ask for it […]