What I learned about writing from dog training
“Here is a thing you should know about me. Sooner or later it will all come back to dogs….” Read about how what I learned in dog training class helped […]
“Millions” flash non-fiction piece in Little Fiction
My piece “Millions” is now available in the amazing (and free!) flash non-fiction issue of Little Fiction | Big Truth. Packed with little stories about big moments, it’s a […]
A story years in the making wins 2018 lush triumphant contest
Desire Eclipse Memory is about a time in my mid-twenties when i was working at one of Montreal’s more notorious restaurants and teetering on the edge of addiction and crisis. […]
#lifebeforetheinternet
View this post on Instagram He pulled out a photograph of a woman. I loved her, he said, I loved her so much. He was very drunk. He told me […]
Red Star Tattoo Book Trailer
I said when I began writing this book I would embrace all the learning and growth opportunities that the work gave me. I’ve battled with honesty, fear, ego, and now….IMovie. […]
Halloween 1973
We were walking down the road towards the full moon.
A blue pick-up truck passed us. In the back of the truck were a witch, a fairy, and a ghost. I was Little Red Riding Hood. My sister was sixteen, so she wasn’t anything at all.
By the time we got to the school, the Halloween party was already half-over. There were no more goody bags, or chocolate or even candy corn. All that was left were hard orange toffees wrapped in waxy Halloween paper, and black jaw breakers. The punch was warm and watery pink, with the cherries all sunk to the bottom.
One day and then another
This past week was pretty hard for me. Even after sixteen years of working with vulnerable kids, kids beaten up by poverty, cultural genocide and addiction, it is still hard to know that a kid who is talking about suicide can’t get a bed in a hospital for a night. To know that when you call for help for a kid what you’re going to get is cops with guns questioning them. Some cops are nice and some are not but everything about them: their handcuffs, their tazers, tell a kid they’re in trouble. And after they talk to the kid they will more than likely leave them behind because they know when they get to the hospital they won’t admit them. “I’m happy to sit in a hospital waiting room for five hours until they send her home,” the cop tells me. “But my boss is not going to like it.” Sometimes even if the hospital takes them they release them a few hours later in a taxi alone.
It’s like a kid coming to you with a broken arm and having to tell them: It’s not broken enough.
Writing credits
Books Red Star Tattoo My Life as a Girl Revolutionary (Penguin Random House Canada 2016) Winner of the 2017 Edna Staebler Creative Non-Fiction Award. Shortlisted for the 2016 Hilary Weston Creative […]
Memory, fiction, and drug dealers I have known
“Writing is how I process and honour experiences that too often are seen as secret or shameful. Like the man at the halfway house, I want to tell you where […]