I’m so grateful to Erika from the Narrows Artist Residency in Nelson BC for the beautiful week of writing. The residency is accessed by boat up Kootenay Lake and is both in a stunning straw-bale house and art studio. The solitude before such a wild summer was like medicine.
Very excited to join the fifth annual Downtown Eastside Writers Festival to guide a free workshop:
We want to write about thematic and social problems that matter to us, but we don’t want our stories to sound didactic and bossy. How do we create fiction that relays a certain message about injustice in our communities, that still feels complexly human and real? This workshop will discuss plot, theme, and understory, and how writers like Billy-Ray Belcourt, Mary South, and Daniel Alarcón create scenes that show, rather than tell readers about justice for their characters and communities.
All are welcome to join, admission is free! There are so many exciting events lined up for this festival. More information can be found here: https://www.dteswritersfestival.com
Thank you to the North Shore Writers Festival for inviting me and my amazing Capilano University colleagues to participate in the inaugural Capilano Creative Writing 101 presentation. We were delighted to offer prompts and showcase our amazing students at this incredible event.
Deeply grateful to Samantha Haywood and Eva Oakes at Transatlantic for your support of this book. Beyond grateful that you' worked so hard on my behalf. Shout out to Jen Sookfong Lee for your keen eye and love for the project! Out from ECW Press in Spring 2027!
Thank you to Jen Sookfong Lee at ECW Press, and Eva Oakes and Samantha Haywood at Transatlantic Agency for bringing this book into the world. Coming Spring 2027!
So grateful and delighted to be at the Vermont Studio Center as a writing fellow for the next two weeks. Massive thank you to the staff and in particular the literary program for the invitation, and to the other artists and writers who are so rad and inspiring. And shout out to the family for holding it down at home. Deep thanks.
This summer, I was incredibly lucky to attend Joya: Artist in Residency in Southern Spain as a visiting writer. My time there was rich and rewarding— I revised and created a new version of an old project. It was a gift to have the time and space to focus on rebuilding a narrative I had loved long ago. It was like meeting an old friend. I’m so grateful to Joya and the beautiful staff, volunteers and fellow artists who worked alongside me.
So grateful to La Leña Residency on Galiano Island for the amazing week of work. Thank you to Dayna for your tireless dedication to artists and for this beautiful place.
Thank you to CRAFT and judge Maisy Card for awarding VEGABOY first place in the First Chapters Contest. This excerpt will be published in December in CRAFT; thank you to that editorial team for your beautiful work.
See the announcement here: https://www.craftliterary.com/craft-first-chapters-contest-2022/
Thank you to the amazing community at MacDowell for awarding me a fellowship for 2022. In residence I completed a manuscript that has been in the works for four years. Thank you, too, to the amazing artists there for your guidance and brilliance and friendship.
About the Session
How does the global village tell stories? How does the digital age change our thinking and our writing? Thanks to the internet, we are now used to events being broadcast instantly and simultaneously. Plural voices report on every issue, and text is always accompanied by video, sound and image. As we delve further into the digital age, we are increasingly comfortable with hyperlinks and hybrid forms and multiple narrators infiltrating our narration. But do we forsake a certain intimacy in our literature? Are we growing accustomed to the isolation of constant connectivity? This seminar examines what we gain and lose by writing in a networked society, and how these new forms appear on the page and screen.
So grateful to Literary Affairs in Los Angeles for inviting me to moderate a panel at the Beverly Hills Literary Escape. Best quote, Joan Silber: “Raise your hand if you’ve never done something stupid for love.” None of us did. 💗
My story Paradise, NV is here in Cosmonaut's Avenue, a journal run and edited by women! These editors are rad, I love their taste. I feel honoured to be in their pages again.
My story “Paradise, NV” has just made it to the short list at the Cosmonaut’s Avenue Fiction Prize. I love these guys/girls!!!!!!!
Delighted to have my story "The Doors" in River Styx Guide to Money and Power. The editorial board here is is a force-- very happy to see this bit of Nevada in your pages.
MIXED MEDIA COLLAGES, JULIEN PACAUD
Julien Pacaud is a french illustrator, currently living in Le Mans, France. Before becoming an illustrator, he was, by turns : an astrophysicist, an international snooker player, a hypnotist and an Esperanto teacher.
I’ll be reading at the next Sumarr Reading Series event at Pop Hop books. Sunday June 21 at 3pm! Highland Park! With the insanely talented poets! Here’s the invite!
My flash fiction “Out of Order” appears in the latest Cosmonaut’s Avenue. It’s just a wee story about smoking speed and having a baby. Nothing strange here!
I love the editors at Cosmonaut Avenue and the fine people at Summer Literary Seminars. I could not be more stoked to be a finalist in their flash fiction contest. Soon to be published in their journal. Yes.
Lori Nix’s dioramas in “Post Human Utopia.”
Lately I have been concerned with utopia, and the ways in which we create dystopia out of our utopian spaces, and how every dystopia also contains glimpses of utopia, and how to write a fucking utopian novel with a baby strapped to one’s chest.