Climate Change

Today is the third day of rain since J. and I arrived in central Ontario. When we took Mowat for a walk this morning, we could smell mould on the forest floor, and up the street, the house on the corner is covered in overgrown ivy. It’s like a rain-forest here, compared to the dry […]

A Mixed Tape for Swarm

Despite the fact that my mother studied to be an opera singer in the 1960s, I’m not a very musical person. I mean, I make up silly songs about everything, especially our growing collection of animals, but I don’t listen to a lot of music. I write in silence because I find any sound pulls […]

Jam Jars

Somebody on Facebook said that there are robins in Toronto. Really? This is the time of year that totally screws me up. Edging s.l.ow.l.y out of winter down south when up here, the snow has yet to start slumping and this morning it was forty below with the windchill. Should I stop? But the weather […]

The Grim Reality

It’s grim, a friend said to me the other day. She didn’t mean it in a bad way. She’s a person who isn’t afraid of darkness in her fiction but, even still, I cringed a little bit. That’s nothing new. Since Swarm has been out I’ve found myself feeling a tad insecure about the austerity of the […]

Canada Reads Deadline Day

It turns out I’m the only writer in Manitoba who made it onto the Top 40 for Canada Reads, so yesterday I chatted with Terry MacLeod on the CBC Manitoba Morning Show about Swarm. Here’s the interview:   They also asked me to write an article about my top five concerns of our current oil-hungry […]