This is a pretty exciting time in any author’s life. Particularly so for me, because it’s been five years since the last time I published a book. I’m a bit out of practice. But come Sept. 5 it happens. And then it’s out of my hands, and the world will… Read more »
In September, 2014, I was interviewed by the lovely and empathetic Mary Hynes for CBC Radio’s Tapestry. The subject was my father, and what it was like to live with him, and be raised by him. It was rather different for me, to address this subject factually. Of course, I’d… Read more »
Actor Dave Lamb wrote this for Australians, in response to a Sydney Morning Herald article moaning about tax money being spent on “lazy” artists. We in Canada have heard those ridiculous arguments, usually spread by Conservatives bucking for the arts, and the careers of artists themselves, to live and die by… Read more »
Just got word that Practical Jean made the list of “100 Canadian Books To Read in a Lifetime” as determined by the great Canlit website 49thShelf.com. You can see the list here. Practical Jean comes in at number 32, which hereby becomes my favorite number. This happened on the same… Read more »
(This is the third of three posts on what we’ve dubbed the Leacock Road Trip — five men, four of them winners of the Leacock medal for humour (the other the curator of the Leacock Museum), transporting a portion of the ashes of a fifth winner to be distributed on… Read more »
The flight out of Toronto got off with a couple of hiccups. A security officer wanted to check my bag for something suspicious and when I opened it as she requested she rummaged around and then tapped a solid wooden box. Something in there was bothering her. I opened it… Read more »
There are questions on this November night. So many questions: What exactly is the weather right now in the Rocky Mountains? What do you pack when you’re going to meet W.P. Kinsella in Yale, BC? Does the van we’re taking to meet him have chains on its tires? Wait, I… Read more »
It comes between summer and winter. It is a time of stiffening winds, dying hopes and chilling glimpses of our (books’) mortality. It is a bitter time, ameliorated only by the promise of fleeting shafts of warm sunlight that we know, from experience, will fall through the clouds onto a… Read more »
We journey for different reasons, but they come down to one of two things I think: To get away, or to find. Sometimes it’s both. Six or seven months ago, I decided I needed to move away from the life I had toward something new. I was struggling to start… Read more »
Life rushes by very quickly. One day you’re worrying about buying a present for your daughter’s 10th birthday, and the next you’re thinking about what to get for her start at university. You think about moving to a new house or apartment and suddenly realize your history includes owning three… Read more »