One of the prompts I offered in response to the poem was to trace the rise and fall of a relationship. The poem referenced the Spanish Steps, which sent me back to a trip to Rome in 1978 and included a more recent experience last year.

In a grand restaurant near the Spanish Steps, the balding waiter in black jacket and tie prepared our salad with a flourish and a proud grin. He held the lemon aloft and twisted the fork to produce a steady stream of juice. We ordered a new dish, eggplant parmesan, and moaned with pleasure through our full mouths. Our waiter liked us, I imagined, the young Canadian couple experiencing authentic Italian dishes. Or perhaps he found us amusing.

In 1978, I was unaware that in a small room overlooking the Piazza de Spagna, John Keats died not far from where we dined. Unaware, also, that despite Rome, despite Florence, despite the remote mountain village where we drank wine from a clay jug, the love between us was also dying.

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever,” Keats wrote. “Its loveliness increases.”

Later, back in Canada, when spring was turning to summer, I sliced eggplant and salted it to remove the bitterness, stewed Roma tomatoes with garlic and fresh basil, grated mozzarella and parmesan. To summon the memory of Rome, those moments of discovery and delight, to bring David back to me.

As John Keats lay in that small room by the Spanish Steps, his beloved friend, Joseph Severn, brought him soup and drew his beautiful dying face.

I watched David lift the fork to his full lips, melted cheese atop sauce that had simmered for hours, the sleek purple edge of eggplant, and watched as it entered a mouth that had once melted into mine. He would take me in his arms. He would say, “We’ll always have Rome.” He would make love to me again.

Red paste splattered onto his plate. “I can’t eat this,” he said. “It’s disgusting.”

I put my own forkful into my mouth. He was right. Salt. Too much salt. I hadn’t known to rinse the eggplant once the bitterness was gone.

Last year, I read the plaque on the door beside the Spanish Steps and climbed the stairs to the apartment where John Keats died. I paid five euros and sat out of the heat in the vine-covered terrace overlooking the steps.

Framed pieces of his poems and letters lined the walls of the room where he lived his final days. Portraits by his dear friend who stayed with him until the end. The narrow bed, the small nightstand, the pitcher and cup.

I don’t know where that restaurant from 1978 is, and I didn’t look. This year’s Rome is not that year’s Rome. There are no ten-dollar pensions, no easy walk through the Sistine Chapel, and no waiters in ties and tight black jackets performing culinary miracles at the table. And no David with his bitter tongue, who suggested break-up sex that final night. What remains are the majestic plane trees along the Tiber, the cool green of the Villa Borghese, and the green cross of the farmacia near Piazza San Silvestro, where, out of necessity, I’d spoken my first Italian.

This year’s Rome offered me quiet respite and the view from a room where a poet once died.

New Workshop Series

Several of those who’ve written with me have expressed the need to move beyond the generative writing done in most AWA workshops. They’ve got reams of scenes or poems and pails-full of ideas that need dedicated time to organize, structure, edit, and polish. Accountability, camaraderie, and support are desired.

So, beginning on September 3, I’m offering a six-week series to structure, revise, add to, or edit your work.

Each week, writers check in to share their ideas, woes, triumphs, and stumbling blocks, after which we move into silent time to work on whatever is required. I’ll offer prompts which can be used or ignored. At the end of the hour of working time, we check in to read, receive feedback, ask questions, or generally share where we are with our projects.

Dates are September 3, 10, 17, 24, October 1, 8

Rock Star facilitators

Although most of us AWAers agree that the method designed by the humble visionary, Pat Schneider, creates magic wherever and whenever it’s offered (provided the facilitator stays true to the method, of course), some facilitators add such brilliance to the method that one leaves their workshops on a bit of a cloud, reassured that they are indeed fine writers who can make the reader swoon, weep, or laugh out loud.

I want to call out some AWA leaders I recently experienced who I feel elegantly exemplify the method with compelling prompts and profoundly compassionate listening skills.

Susan Wingert, Susan Josephs, and Pennie Nichols. If you can slide into one of their workshops, you will consider yourself very fortunate indeed.

Blessings to all. Until next time…

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Find Me Here

But the threat of AI encroaches - to both the earth’s and our cultural atmosphere. So I got a bit giddy when I heard the pope speak out about it. Then I read what David Moran wrote in Tumbleweed Words about an AI story that won a major prize:

“…Raymond Carver doesn’t write that the grief was overwhelming. He writes that a man stared at his hands. The hands aren’t chosen for atmosphere. They’re chosen because they’re the most accurate container for what the writer knows about that specific moment of grief. The reader feels the grief in the hands because the hands are where the grief has gone...”

He goes on to elaborate about minimalist fiction and how AI will never be able to understand the subtleties and nuances of human emotion. I believe that, (I need to), and it makes me want to up my game. Not to be more “literary” but to be more true. More authentic.

I opened this newsletter pointing to ways we can be terrified these days, in order to state that I refuse the invitation. Instead, because I want to share the love and the magic of the Amherst method, I’m offering the following in-person free introductory AWA workshops:

Saturday, June 13, from 1-3 pm at the Kawartha Lakes library in Lindsay, Ontario

Thursday, June 25, with Louise Ells in Collingwood from 1-3 pm

Thursday, July 9, from 2- 4 pm at the Minden branch of The Haliburton Public Library.

Everyone is welcome. Come, listen to me extol the virtues of AWA and then get down to some prompted writing.

Also, despite the news, I continue to plan for international adventures.

The October writing retreat in Greece is at capacity. Yay! If you’d like to be put on the waiting list, let me know.

I’ve booked a villa in southern Italy for April 2027, and along with the charming and knowledgeable Roberto, have designed a week-long delicious dive into the regional tastes and experiences of Puglia. This will be a smaller group of 6 – 8 writers, so do let me know if you’d like to find out more.

Now for some risky writing.

This month, Pennie Nichols led AWA’s monthly write. Her overall theme was the moon. One poem she used as a prompt was Sara Teasdale’s The New Moon. Blue Moon has a particular ring for me since the last time I was in India, I was part of a group of women called The Taras of the Blue Moon. We were doing healing work in the ashram based on the neo-Tibetan teachings of an unorthodox Texan named Dheeraj, AKA Rudolph Murley. (It’s a long story.)

To Pennie’s prompt of Sara’s poem, I wrote the following:

In the pre-monsoon heat on the morning of March’s second full moon, the ashram celebrated Enlightenment Day with a parade through the Banyan tree-lined streets of Koregoan Park. Dancers, jugglers, singers, and musicians made joyful while I, dressed as one of the thirteen Taras of the Blue Moon, smiled through a head and stomach threatening to explode. Some of the Taras rode on the donkey cart while others, including myself, walked in front and beside. We were lovely in sky blue silk, gauzy veils, and blue foil crescent moons adorning our heads. There’s a picture of me smiling, my hands held up in the mudra for the ovary circuit from our Tibetan healing training. But I was sick. We followed the elephant on which sat the exotic, bejewelled Puerto Rican beauty who’d made off with my lover’s heart some time before. In that punishing heat, I chanted along with the others, la la la, the sound intended to activate feminine healing properties, as if I knew what a Tara actually was, as if I’d recovered from the hole punched in the middle of me, as if I was happy

Behind the mimes and flute players, the massive pachyderm swayed with the lovely, radiant one waving, red and blue jewels at her breast glinting in the harsh sun. From its leathery behind, the elephant released chunk after chunk of golden brown dung. I was a Tara of the Blue Moon in my blue, blue other-worldly finery, stepping around and in between those clumps of steaming odiferous shit.

I was a blue, blue Tara on that blistering day of enlightenment for the second full moon of the month, while she rode on, oblivious to what fell in her wake.

Check out the calendar here for the various times and days of upcoming 2-hour online workshops.

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I’m grateful for Vlad, who virtually held my hand and helped as best he could, but “jabbers event calendar” wasn’t his script, and apparently, you don’t mess with other people’s scripts (whatever that actually means). Developers are wont to assure you that installation is easy peasy. And I’m sure it is if you know code, and what API, cPanel, VPS, and PHP mean and do. I don’t. But I’m working on it, even though I’d rather be working on my novel, thank you very much.

Anyway, after some very choice words, a whole new set of glitches, a volley of emails to India and Poland, some dead brain cells, and eye strain, I think it’s good to go. So, if you happen to be signing up for a workshop, you’ll see a few things have changed. Luckily, the workshops also change, but in much more interesting ways!

New & Improved Workshop Calendar

One of the major headaches was around payment options. In the old calendar, I only needed to input my email address for the PayPal link. This time, I had to create a new business account, blah blah blah. What they don’t offer is my preferred method to send and receive money from outside of Canada. WISE. It’s brilliant. Its fees are significantly lower, as are its exchange rates. It takes a little doing since you have to link it to your bank account, but once you’re in, it’s simple.

To start the process, you can go here to sign up: https://wise.com/invite/ilpn/susanelizabethw7

You’re welcome.

Time to Write

Last week, I offered the poem, The Stand by Diane Seuss as a prompt, with the following suggestions to get the words flowing. Write about: 1. Walking a dog, 2. An unexpected encounter, or 3. Feeling “caught” despite innocence. And included this picture from Unsplash.

I didn’t write to any of them (because no one, including me, is required to follow suggestions). Instead, I thought about the idea in the poem of “just standing.”

I was just standing there. Not waiting. Just standing by the river and breathing. Maybe I was waiting just a little, hoping an otter would slip by with its long, sleek body, or a heron with its magnificent wings changing the air current over the water, or a deer to come to the edge for a drink. Otherwise, no investment in the moment to be more than it was. Because the green spring air and the scent of good water were enough. With the sponge of moss underfoot and the sky fallen into the river without hesitation. I was just standing there with the shush of the river, the land, and the sky. I’d like to assure you that it was enough. But perhaps in that moment I needed to assure myself, because every day tells me it’s not enough. Not enough time for all the tasks infesting my mind, busying my hands, goading my feet. In this moment, my hands were strangely still and the soles of my feet content where they were. I had a thought about how long it had been since the woods had released the frantic call of a whippoorwill. No, I said, as if to a child, none of that; just this now. Stay, I told myself. Just stand here. Now. It is more than enough to simply stand here on this cool spring morning by a river who knows exactly what to do.

I invite you to use the poem, the suggestions, or the picture to write for 15 minutes, and see where that takes you. Or simply write for 15 minutes, because you never know what brilliance is waiting to emerge.

Happy writing!

Workshop Schedule - Eastern Time Zone

Mondays: 12:00 - 2 pm

Thursdays: 3 - 5 pm

Tuesday, May 19: 4 - 6 pm

Saturday, May 23 & June 27: Deep-Dive 1 - 4 pm

Tuesday, June 2: 3 - 5 pm

And the novel is still making appearances, with the bonus of free writing workshops. All are welcome.

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I’ve heard many storytellers, both novelists and filmmakers, say that growing up, they never saw themselves reflected in books, television or film. This being the impetus for them to tell their own stories.

Every time I hear that, I look back over what I’ve read and watched throughout my life to see where I may have recognized myself or my story. Early books included the Noddy series, Snip, Snap, Snur and the Buttered Bread, Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka (seriously), The Wind in the Willows, Dr. Suess, Alice in Wonderland… you get my drift here. As for television, I was five years old when we got our first one. The Friendly Giant was kind, and maybe he was speaking to me. Not sure. There were other shows with children, such as Romper Room and Howdy Doody, but it never occurred to me that these shows in any way reflected my experiences.

What did I read as I got older? Nancy Drew, of course, C.S Lewis, and then my mind skips to the teenage years of Oscar Wilde, Hermann Hesse, D.H. Lawrence, the Russians, Irving Stone, and Leonard Cohen. In my twenties, I read Beckett, Dante, Rimbaud, Lorca…

I watched Easy Rider, Little Big Man, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Sound of Music, A Clockwork Orange, Bonnie and Clyde, The Birds, My Fair Lady.

My point is that nowhere in popular culture did I find me looking back. I suppose that I wasn’t expecting anyone to tell stories about my life. Through books and film, I learned of other lives, times, and worlds. I took what I was offered - glimpses into other views and possibilities.

Now, although I continue to enjoy historical fiction for what it reveals and teaches about the past, I most often read contemporary novels and memoirs. It’s also what I write. Not because of an urgency to see myself in print, per se, and only in part because I’m rather lazy about research, but because I have a certain authority and plenty of material from my life to draw on to keep me writing for the rest of my days. And I trust those with a passion for other worlds to write those stories. Think of it this way: rather than bungle along myself, I hire people to fix and build things in and around my home who are trained and competent.

The great reward of writing “What the Living Do” has been hearing readers say they related to Brett, my protagonist. They saw their brave, flawed, stubborn self in her. One man told me that the story helped him understand women. That was a shock, but I’ll take it.

So, what about the desire to see oneself reflected in the arts? What I’m getting at is the universality in the personal; relating to images, poems, and stories in a human way, even if the circumstances are not our own. In that we all long for something or someone, whether it be freedom or love or food or a moment from the past, and we all have been hurt by being misunderstood, abandoned, rejected, or beaten, to name just a few of our universal/personal experiences in this precious life.

In that way, I could, as a young child, relate to Yertle the Turtle’s foolish desire to reign over the entire pond, if not his specific employment of every turtle to stand on. Because I felt small and inconsequential, if I could have commanded other children to lift me, I likely would have. Later, I didn’t feel the full force of dear Anna’s guilt and shame, but something in her makeup and situation made me not only care about her but also know that, under the same circumstances, I might have thrown myself under a train.

I might have.

Maybe.

So, no and yes. Although I do and don’t necessarily see myself or my life reflected in the stories I read or watch, the most compelling are the ones in which I relate to the emotion, the inner worlds of the characters.

I’m currently reading Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, and while the lives depicted don’t reflect my life in any obvious way, I’m drawn into the story as though it could be my own. We hear so much about the German experience—the deprivation of the ordinary German during the war, and the horrendous treatment of Polish and Jewish people, but very little about the Korean experience under Japanese colonization. Love, loss, and loyalty are themes we can all relate to, and this novel takes the reader deep into particular themes of victimization—deprivation, starvation, incarceration, and bloodlines—which succeeds in creating intimacy, thereby making me, the reader, more compassionate. Already, my perspective has shifted.

I’ve been going to Japanese restaurants for decades, many of which are run by Koreans. I once had a boyfriend who, having spent some time in Japan, was proud of his few Japanese phrases. In a tatami room in a Japanese restaurant, he proudly said something to our lovely, smooth-faced server. With an apologetic smile, she told him, “I Korean.” We found that somewhat amusing. Reading this book about the lives of Koreans before, during, and after the Second World War, I’m ashamed to think I found it amusing that it is often Koreans who own and work in Japanese restaurants.

So… not only do we learn of other lives and experiences by reading, but we also find a universality in specific, personal, and intimate portrayals. If not situational, surely all memorable stories mirror the human condition.

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Upcoming Appearances

wherein Louise Ells and I map our routes to publication and offer a free workshop.

Greece is still on the table… October 13 to 22, 2026 - 3 spots remain.

Write Your Way In

In the poem, Consuming Desire by Katrina Vandenberg, she writes, “You want a big piece/of this world. You would love to have the whole thing.”

In response to that poem and that sentiment, I wrote the following:

I was born hungry. And desert thirsty.

I am learning to accept hunger as a sensation and not life-challenging danger. The question, “What are you hungry for?” arises with more clarity, so I’m able to be more conscious of my impulses than in the past. Is it love? Companionship? Meaning? With what could I answer this hunger, if not with food?

The sense of abandonment I’ve felt at times of hunger isn’t logical. I was born in an era when it was believed babies should be fed on a schedule, and not necessarily when they were hungry, so I’ve often wondered if the panic that hunger can induce stems from an infancy where my unscheduled cries weren’t heeded. Or maybe I unconsciously equate low blood sugar with starvation.

Somewhere in the early eighties, at an Italian restaurant I loved, I was the only one of four friends who’d ordered an appetizer. A simple prosciutto and melon I intended to share.

Mostafa was visiting from Italy. Marianne and Joe spoke slowly for him as his English was still new. He’d ordered Saltimbocca alla Romana, a dish he told us meant, “I come in your mouth,” which I doubted was an accurate translation.

I was growing a little anxious since I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, my mouth anticipating the marriage of salty meat and juicy fruit.

Aromas of pesto and truffle wafted by. Roberto, the elegant and respectfully flirtatious waiter, glided by our table after delivering plates of eggplant, tagliatelle, and Bistecca alla Fiorentina to a nearby table.

My mouth, my tongue, and my belly ached for sustenance. I needed to be fed. Marianne, Joe, and Mostafa tipped across the table to better understand one another, talking nonsense, talking passports, borders, regimes, and some wise old man in Paris who was going to free the people from the evil Shaw. I needed to eat.

“Roberto.” My bones dug into the chair, its back legs suspended. “My prosciutto?”

He clapped his hands to his face, “Madonna,” he said. “I forgot to order it.”

If my friends were still talking, I didn’t hear. If there had ever been love in the world, it had vanished in a heartbeat. I’d been abandoned, forgotten. Neither his neglect nor my deluge was intentional.

Roberto dropped to his knees, his stricken face tilted up. “Amore, what can I do?” he pleaded. “I bring you anything, whatever you want. Please, Cara, please don’t cry.”

I tried, I really did, to stop crying. “I’m sorry,” I told him between sobs. He was so beautiful and I so foolish.

This memory ends here. I may or may not have received that pork and fruit. Possibly, our main courses arrived shortly thereafter.

This belly-plummeting response happened again some years later. I didn’t weep in front of my new lover at his mother’s house when he’d neglected to heed my urgent request. I left him there and found a sub shop where I wept over a sandwich. The man who served me had been so kind.

That man, who became my second husband, had seen my face, though, and vowed I’d never feel that way again.

It may not be an earth-shattering realization, but I’m quite clear that we don’t always get what we want or intend.

And remind myself that:

Food is not love.

Hunger is just a sensation.

Upcoming Appearances

What the Living Do and Lies I Told My Sister

I’ll be spilling the tea on what it took to write, edit, publish, and promote my debut novel, after which I’ll lead an AWA creative writing workshop. All are welcome.

Where: Kawartha Lakes Public Library 190 Kent St W, Lindsay, ON

When: Saturday, June 13, from 1- 4 pm

Louise Ells, Lies I Told My Sister, Latitude 46, and I will be divulging the many arcane secrets to creating our novels from the raw material of our lives, and offering a creative writing workshop suitable for those at every level of confidence and skill.

Where: Collingwood Public Library, 55 Ste Marie St, Collingwood, ON

When: Thursday, June 25, from 2 pm

The retreat this October is filling up nicely, but three places remain. A time to bask in sun and companionship, and most importantly, enjoy time to devote to your writing.

AWA Offering

Amherst Writers & Artists hosts a monthly online write open to everyone. On Saturday, April 25, at 1 pm Eastern, Holly Holt will lead this two-hour workshop. It’s a great (inexpensive) way to experience the method and get some writing done.

AWA has a “Writer” level membership for $50 a year, which, among other benefits, includes 8 of these monthly offerings.

Online Writing Calendar

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· A 3-step story about trying to feed step-children

· Accolades, successes, and launches about other writer friends

· An invitation to attend an FAQ session about Amherst Writers & Artists session

· Upcoming events and added workshops

· An update on the Writing retreat in Greece this fall.

In previous posts, I offered examples of 7 steps to discover various ways to tell your story or write your poem. Recently, I offered this process in an online workshop and was surprised by what I came up with. I’d love to post what the writers in my group create because there’s so much brilliance, but unfortunately, without permission, I’m stuck with my own.

I won’t go through the entire process again here, but to demonstrate how a piece can develop, I will share the parts that moved what I worked on.

Here is the 3^rd person present tense version:

Children, especially this young - six and eight - are alien to her, so she considers what she may have liked to eat when she was a child. She creates individual pizzas for them using pita bread, homemade tomato sauce, buffalo mozzarella, and, given that she no longer eats meat, slices organic soy hot dogs instead of pepperoni.

What she wants is for them to love her, embrace her as the mother they need, not the one who pulled their hair and dragged them down the hall. She would be the one to feed them, nourish them, protect them.

The children’s mink brown eyes wide as quarters. “Hot dogs on a pizza?” they exclaim in unison.

She stands for a moment at the end of the table in her afternoon kitchen with a bleary sun struggling through the curtains, and tries to breathe. They are only children, she reminds herself, familiar only with what their real mother provides. But her heart has risen to her throat and plummeted to her ankles.

She retreats, unable to explain, cajole, or insist, to the basement where she sits on the floor and weeps. She has failed. She will never be a mother. A pizza with hot dogs proves this.

Second person, present tense (one of my favourites):

You want them to feel safe, nourished, and possibly to love you. So you make individual pizzas for each of your son-to-be stepchildren. What child doesn’t love a pizza made especially for them? Since your cancer diet has restricted meat, you’ve sliced organic soy hot dogs in place of pepperoni. The girl has just turned six, the boy, eight. After their birth mother’s violent outburst and insistence that she couldn’t cope, you’ve taken them into your home. Their father is grateful, but you don’t need gratitude from the children, only their trust. So you set the small round pita pizzas – you call peet-zas – on the table in your small kitchen and tell them to wait until they cool a bit.

Their faces contort, their mink-brown eyes sharp with scorn. “You don’t put hot dogs on pizza,” they say in unison.

You don’t really hear what their father is saying. Something about eat it anyway. He’s been leaning against the counter, the fingers of one hand dug into jean pocket, the other flicking the roller on his lighter. You don’t want to cry, but you’re already down the stairs, out of sight, out of sound, when they flow.

Then, the poem:

Two soft-faced children, mink-brown eyes, hungry,

Their real mother broken, breaking,

So you feed them, keep them safe, and

Offer what she could not.

They will not eat, refuse to put your bread

To their tight little mouths.

It is not they, but you

Who weep.

Lots of Good News:

Over the years of writing together, I’ve been fortunate to have formed unique friendships and to have been supported and uplifted in more ways than I can count. So when these writing friends have news and successes, I’m thrilled.

At the onset of the lockdown, I ran some online series in which we explored writing a braided essay. Five years later, Lorraine Thomson published Half Life, an intimate, powerful memoir launched from her initial essay.

Since the lockdown, Sue Reynolds has hosted Pyjama Writing, an hour every weekday morning for dozens of writers to gather to write in community. Susan Tromanhauser, a dedicated “Pyjama writer,” is launching her book, Humans of Haliburton Highlands, a collection of columns from the local paper, The Highlander, from 1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. on Jun 06, 2026, at the Corner Gallery, 123 Maple Ave, in Haliburton, ON.

Claire Dunn, also a dedicated PJ’er, is set to launch her second novel, Lost in France, on June 30 in Toronto. You can preorder it here:

The New Quarterly recently accepted a creative non-fiction piece by my friend Louise Ells, Lies I Told My Sister, Latitude46, 2024. She just let me know it was from something she wrote in one of my workshops. That’s the kind of news that makes me even more grateful for AWA and the work I’m able to do because of it.

Recently, I attended a couple of celebratory book launches – Hollay Ghadery’s, The Unravelling of Ou at Blue Heron Books in Uxbridge and Alison Gadsby’s, Breathing is How Some People Stay Alive at The Society Clubhouse in Toronto. I’m so moved by the community’s support and engagement in each other’s work. Literary life is tough, so having these brilliant moments of celebration does so much to bolster confidence and keep us writing.

And then there’s the wonderful news of a picture book co-authored by Ben Benson and Laurie Elmquist, illustrated by Chief Lady Bird (pending publication, Orca Book Publishers, 2027). It’s my son’s debut as a picture book author, and if you know anything about my boy, you know fishing is his passion, so for this story, he was the guy.

FAQ for the AWA Curious

Saturday, April 11, from 1 to 3 p.m., Susan Wingert and I will host a free session to introduce the wonders of the Amherst Writers & Artists (AWA) method of writing workshop facilitation. We’ll give a rundown of the principles and practices, followed by writing prompts to get your pen moving. You’ll have a live (virtual) experience of writing, reading, and listening. Join us!

New Workshops added

I’ve added some workshops at different times to try to accommodate different schedules. Along with the regular Monday and Thursday workshops at noon, I’ve added Monday, April 20, Thursday, April 30, Monday, May 4, and Thursday, May 14 at 3 pm Eastern. And to shake things up a bit, I’m offering a workshop on Tuesday, April 19, at 4 pm.

There’s also Sunday, April 26, from 1 – 4 pm, where I’ll introduce the idea of using a hinge in the writing – a way to hold opposing senses or feelings in the same piece.

What the Living Do is still alive.

I’ll be offering an author chat and workshop at The Kawartha Lakes Library in Lindsay on Saturday, June 13, at 1 pm. All are welcome!

Louise Ells, Lies I Told My Sister, Latitude46 2024, and I will be teaming up on June 25 at 2 pm to present a kick-ass talk at the Collingwood library, followed by a creative writing workshop.

Recently, I had the great pleasure of bringing all the writers who’ve registered for the retreat in Greece together with a few who are interested. There was such a delightful mix of fascinating people that I’m confident that we’re going to have a richly intriguing time. A few spots remain, so please send me a note if you think you might like to join. October 13 to 22, 2026.

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One Final Note: My website is migrating. If you happen to visit it and find something amiss, please let me know!

Write Your Way In

In this post, I talk about the process of writing, revising, submitting, rejection, and the joys of writing on Substack.

Yesterday, I celebrated the second anniversary of What the Living Do’s launch with a wonderful gang of bookclubbers. They asked great questions - deep and thoughtful. Experiences such as this confirm what I’m addressing in this video - that the connection to real people makes it all worthwhile.

And close to home, as well!

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My offerings

The Exercise:

1. To begin, write a sentence about an activity in the first person, past tense. You can take only 2 or 3 minutes. (“I went”) Or: Take part of an excerpt and rewrite it in First Person, Past Tense.

• I put my hands on his bare back to feel the ridges of his spine.

2. Now rewrite your sentence or excerpt in Third Person, Past Tense (“The woman went”) and extend it a bit. Take 5 minutes here.

• She put her hands on his back to feel how the spine curved, shocked by the sharpness of the protruding vertebrae. She imagined pressing her body against his to set him upright.

3. Try it in Third Person, Present Tense (“The woman goes”) and play with it a bit more. Take 10 minutes.

• Emily wants to help him, straighten him, but she’s been a therapist long enough to know scoliosis can’t be fixed—not with massage, not even with her renowned deep-tissue practice. His spine, a semaphore. How must he see the world? The wrench in his neck can be relieved, but it will provide temporary relief. He trusts her; she can sense that, but her powers are limited. His skin baby soft, without the coarse hair of so many men his age; the ribs like tire spokes protrude all along the left side of his torso.

4. Try Second Person, Present Tense (“You go” – as if someone is talking to you).

• You want to make him comfortable. It’s the least you can do. He’s entrusted his folded body to you as though there’s a cure for a spine shaped like a C. You run your hands over the ridges of his ribcage, marvelling at the watery smoothness of his skin. His body itself listens to your touch. You tell him what you’re afraid he doesn’t want to hear. “I can’t straighten your spine, but I can relax the strain in your muscles.” When he turns to face you, his head shakes a little with the effort. "That’s all I need,” he says.

5. Dialogue without a Narrator (as in a scene from a play—can be two people talking, or one person talking to himself or herself)

• Him: I heard you work magic.

  Her: (laughing) That’s high praise, but I’m afraid I only have these mortal hands with which to work. No special powers.

  Him: I’ve tried everything - all sorts of braces, chiropractic, osteopathy, physiotherapy, laser - and nothing seems to work.

  Her: So what do you imagine I’ll be able to do for you?

  Him: Help me.

  Her: But how? If all these others haven’t been able to, what makes you think I can?

  Him: They say you’re the best. That you work magic.

  Her: Look, I can relax your muscles, possibly open pathways to make you more comfortable. But I can’t work miracles. I can’t straighten your spine.

  Him: I’m not an idiot. Relief is what I’m looking for. Are you able to give me that?

  Her: I can.

  

6. Now, fictionalize the character and flip something about the story (back to Third Person, Past Tense, but with a made-up name)

• In the twenty-two years Emily had been practicing bodywork, she’d never encountered a spine that twisted or a man so utterly broken. Jeremy was thirty-one with the attitude of a fifteen-year-old boy.

  “I know you can’t help me,” he said, “but my wife sent me. She thinks you’re some kind of magician or whatever.”

  She took him in, his torso spiralled like a Sedona juniper, the way his shirt bunched at the right side of his waist, the impatient stamp of his left foot. “Listen, Jeremy, I can only imagine your discomfort, but let me assure you I’m no magician. If the others you mentioned haven’t been able to help you, the likelihood that I will is very slim.” That his attitude, rather than the therapies, was the factor likely preventing relief, she kept to herself. “What I can offer you is a slow, deep massage which may or may not alleviate some of your discomfort.”

The next step in Pat Schneider’s exercise is to compose a poem. I stumbled there, so I revisited the Second Person present tense, which is one of my favourites.

• The wrenched and twisted have trusted their bodies to your hands. You’ve relaxed, eased, and relieved hundreds of their pain. In the beginning, you believed you could restore all to their natural function, one sweet body at a time. But this young man, who twisted his way into the world, is one you won’t be able to fix. He trusts you. You sense it in how the tissue softens with contact, how his skin seems to drink in your touch. So you tell him, because truth matters to you, that you aren’t able to straighten his spine.

  The way he regards you with his cobalt-mined eyes makes you lift your hands from the curve of his ribcage and step back.

  “All I need,” he tells you, “is some relief.”

  After twenty-seven years of practice, you receive your most consequential lesson. He is not broken.

  There is nothing to fix.

This is a terrific exercise to find the ideal way to tell your story. Maybe it’s best told as a poem. In this case, not for me! What I did find by doing all the other parts is the ending. What the story was about.

I invite you to try it. I’d love to hear how it unfolds for you.

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Write With Me!

We began by listing risks that either we or our character had taken. Then we chose the one with the most energy and wrote to that in the present tense. Personally, I had a long list, but I chose the one that had the most at stake.

Here goes:

I’m pregnant. I’m forty-one and dealing with a slow-moving (sometimes stalled) cancer, supporting an unemployed husband and his two children, aged seven and nine. It’s early spring, and the Toronto house I rent has no room for a crib.

For several years, I’ve been living in the city, but have always been a country girl at heart. Whenever I make a suggestion, my husband invariably says, “Sure.” He’s very agreeable. So when I say, “Let’s buy a house,” that’s exactly what he says. He’s from a reserve two hours north of the city, so logically, I think (we think), he should find work in his home reserve.

We begin our search, driving for hours to look at houses. He drives so I can put my swollen feet up on the dash. We stop often, whenever there’s a promise of a toilet, and sometimes when there’s a ditch with flora. Our agent shows us a house within our imaginary budget (imaginary, since I will soon be caring for an infant, carrying a mortgage, and all my massage clients will be hours away) that our children adore because it features a tree house. Inside, massive fish tanks with fish the size of my arm line the living room walls. Upstairs, the two bedrooms have been created by putting a piece of plywood through the centre of the attic. Downstairs, I open the door to the basement to find a river flowing through it. Literally. The water comes halfway up the stairs, and the water is indeed moving. We put an offer on another house, close to the lake. It is fully furnished, save for the master bedroom. The wife took that, apparently. He doesn’t accept our lowball offer and removes his house from the market.

I see an ad in a real estate flyer for a house on a river, less than half an hour from the reserve, and about half an hour to the closest town. I will give birth in two months. The river on this property flows by the house. Each time we view it, the sun shimmers on its lush green grasses. A beaver slides by, a welcome in its shiny dark eye.

I borrow the down payment from a close friend, and she writes a letter to the bank saying the money is repayment of a loan. Because any money I might have saved in the last three years has gone to caring for my new family and all the various alternative cancer treatments.

I am eight months pregnant when we pack up and move with the help of ten wonderful humans and a U-Haul truck. We are ecstatic with our new home. It’s August, and the children swim in the cool green waters that mirror the lush willow, maples, and clouds.

August 20, 1996. I turn forty-two, and a week later, my son arrives after forty-eight hours of labour.

We have no income. None. For three years, my husband and I made crafts - medicine wheels, chokers, hair ties, etc. and travelled to pow wows every weekend where we had a booth. Once the baby arrived, these trips were no longer viable. He doesn’t get a position at his home reserve. There’s lots of room on the credit cards, so don’t worry, he says while rolling cigarettes and languishing by the river. The baby cries and cries and never sleeps. And the house, we discover, has been put together with finishing nails. Knobs come off in my hands.

When my baby is two months old, I pump my breasts and bring him to Toronto, where I leave him in a daycare. While I have my hands on clients, releasing their muscles, soothing their bodies, my vision is filled only with him, my baby, and I ache.

I just ache.

It’s 1998. My husband’s brother gives us an 18-foot teepee. One of the things I admire most about my husband is the way he gives traditional teachings. When we were on the pow wow trail, he’d hold up one of his medicine wheels and share wisdom from the four directions. He knows legends and drum teachings, so I think, why not host retreats here on our beautiful land? That would give you a “job.” Sure, he says.

I take out an ad in Vitality Magazine, and my brother helps me create a website. The phone begins to ring, and my husband listens carefully as I outline our program to potential guests.

Our day-long program expands into weekend retreats, featuring a meditative drum journey, medicine wheel teachings, and a sweat lodge ceremony. We host guests from as far away as Wisconsin. I purchase more teepees – three 18-foot ones for three guests each to sleep, and one 32-foot community teepee for the teachings and evening social time.

I book guests, buy futons and blankets, order wood, make menu plans, shop for food, and cook for as many as twelve guests at a time. That’s when I’m not giving massage sessions in Orillia, Barrie, and Toronto.

Our guests stand by the river to marvel at the beauty of our home. “You must love it here,” they say. I’m sure I do, but I’m a little busy peeling potatoes.

It’s only in June of 2002, when I’ve finally (after 11 years) relented and agreed to a hysterectomy, that I can stand by the river and drink in the absolute loveliness of this place. For six weeks, I’m not allowed to work, so after almost six years, I am finally at home.

It all turned out, as they say. Nothing in the way my cock-eyed vision imagined. But nearly thirty years later, through major bumps and stumbles, minor triumphs and major losses, I can say my regrets are few.

My father would say that I tend to go off half-cocked, and he might have been right, but by some miracles of fate, whatever I shoot seems to land relatively close to the mark.

I would love to read about some risks you’ve taken and their results and/or consequences.

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My ophthalmologist has given me exercises. Ten times a day, I close my eyes for two seconds, squeeze them for two seconds, then open them for two seconds. Repeat ten times. Ten times a day. Because I was unwise to keep them open for so long.

I haven’t been blinking fully or often enough, apparently. My tearfilm (that’s a real word, btw: tearfilm provides lubrication to the external part of the eye and facilitates blinking) works all right. I thought maybe my eye pain, ie, dry eye, stemmed from not crying enough.

I ask the doctor, Should I have let the tears I’ve held captive fall at last? Is this the prize for having learned how not to cry? He doesn’t find this amusing. No, he says, that’s only one way your eyes lubricate.

Close your eyes, he tells me. Repeatedly. Make sure your lids meet. He’s practical and busy. And my eyes hurt. They’re dry, he says. You must close them.

A friend says she has been sleeping with her eyes open ever since ICE came to town. Close your eyes, my friend, close them tight.

The common wisdom to keep our eyes open and our mouths shut is no longer an option.

Two of my eye functions aren’t functioning. Gland stuff. In any case, I’m blinking. A lot. Firmly and repeatedly. The tears form. The good kind, I imagine. Cry me a river.

I blink now. A lot. As though I cannot believe what I am seeing.

But I’ve got to see the evil and the good without hiding at least ten times a day.

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Write With Me

My mother once told me that such sorrow is selfish, since the one left behind suffers the loss. That we aren’t sad for the departed, but sad for ourselves, and in my mother’s view, to be sad just wasn’t on.

I like to tell myself that I don’t weep because I have a good relationship with my own death. No one gets out alive, I remind myself. Or I might experience a pang of jealousy when someone close to me dies because they got to go “home.”

So I carry on my merry way, living as best I can while I still have a body.

The departed enter my dreams, alive and well, so that when I wake, a strange sorrow weighs on me that it was just a dream. Still, I do not cry.

A mishap, a sideswipe, or a misstep has been known to undo my equanimity. A minor or inconsequential event may send me to my knees, as though catastrophe has struck.

Or…

When my pen touches paper. The truth is, I don’t know my own grief until I write. How often the same stories recur, each with its own slant, its own recall, its own flavour.

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader,” Robert Frost famously wrote.

On the Enneagram personality system, I am a seven. A seven is the enthusiast who doesn’t want to be sad. The type is described as busy, fun-loving, spontaneous, versatile, distractible, and scattered. Not sad. Without consciously doing so, I tuck away grief where it can’t get me.

Then it all rolls out with the ink. The heartbreak, the ache I thought I didn’t feel. I write about what should have broken me but didn’t.

Elizabeth Alexander wrote, “Perhaps tragedies are only tragedies in the presence of love, which confers meaning to loss.”

The other day, as I was driving through the interminable snow, a newscaster reported that a Doberman Pinscher took Best in Show at Westminster. Tears sprang to my eyes. (See previous statement about inconsequential.) I gripped the steering wheel and swallowed hard. My mother dreamt of taking Michael, her beloved standard poodle, to New York. To Westminster.

If I had told you about her dogs, how she did take Michael to championship (although not at Westminster), and how she had gone to New York to that show, it would have been a mildly interesting anecdote. But the radio reference to Westminster, as I drove into town, swiped me sideways. A brief story about a dog whose co-owner was Canadian broke something open.

I’m not a monster – some films make me cry, witnessing an unexpected kindness might do it, and my son’s accomplishments never fail to elicit tears (which he finds mildly amusing).

But loss, no. It takes a news item about a dog to make me realize how much I miss my mother.

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Write With Me!

On January 27 at 10:59 pm, a 4.1 magnitude earthquake rocked the world around me. Not earth-shattering but shaky enough to wake people up. Some thought it was snow released from their roof, and many presumed it was a late-night snowplough rumbling by. Not me. I was asleep in my new bed, my dream bed, the bed I never want to leave. I didn’t feel the earth move because I was deeply, blissfully asleep.

It’s colder here than anyone likely wanted it to be - except my son, who gets restless waiting for the ice to thicken so he can get out there, drill holes and wait for fish to bite.

Today, the snow is blinding, a reprieve from all the snowfall. It’s 30 degrees below zero, and my hot water pipe froze.

Otherwise, the world is being shaken by its heels. Which can’t be avoided by snuggling down in my divine new bed.

Everyone is scrambling, trying to protect themselves – from prison, gunfire, and idiots.

I think about the situation with the lunatic to the south, although honestly, it grieves me to have my attention yanked away repeatedly by news of such a despicable excuse for a human. Yes, that was my outside voice, but I have no plans to attempt to cross into that territory.

There’s hope, of course, which we hold onto the way we hold onto the crossbar of a rollercoaster. As though hope will save us when the ride collapses.

However…

Thousands are out in the streets freezing their asses off, protecting each other. Nations are banding together, diverting their resources. I’ve heard that courts are considering contempt. Crimes and misdemeanours.

It’s not hopeless, not hopeless, not hopeless.

Arundhati Roy has said that by focussing on the individual and waiting for him to be impeached, we fail to recognize the system that produced him. A few years ago, I read a quote by Deepak Chopra saying something along the lines of evil having always existed, but now it’s visible; it’s raised its head above ground.

I ask, is it truly an us-against-them phenomenon, or is what we’re experiencing a manifestation of our own inner battles? Is it luck or rigging or bullying or a crack in the collective consciousness that brought a despot to power? Yes, I know, many perceive the one who yells the loudest and raises a fist as the one with power.

But not you, my friend. You, whom I wish has a warm bed, trusted friends, nourishing food and conversation, and light in your sweet heart.

Because…

Maybe we’ve been shaken up by earthquakes or the news, but let’s consider this to be the tipping point, the nadir of our days. A close shave with several nicks and some blood.

We tripped, but maybe we won’t fall.

Stay safe and be kind.

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Come, write with me… It’s safe, inclusive, and supportive. Your voice, your way.

And don’t forget, there’s a groaning board of AWA offerings all month long during our annual fundraising event, Write Around the World. Everyone is welcome, no matter what your relationship to your writing.

I don’t know how many of the nine billionaires who’ve gone to space simply because they can got the point. The point I’m trying to make, the one so many astronauts have understood.

If you sent the orange gorilla up in space, might he get it? Or simply rub his little hands together like Gollum and chant, Mine, all mine, my precious?

I keep asking, what? What is the endgame? For these gluttonous gobblers. Let’s say any one of them “wins” and manages to dominate the entire world, are they satisfied? Can they relax? Sit back and sigh with pleasure? Settle down? Or would their hearts have shrunk to the size of a snail, their synapses firing in a remote quadrant of their brain, the remaining capacity dried out and atrophied?

Honestly, even without looking down on our tiny planet, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand how precious our home is. We all know in our bones that there is no Planet B. So why doesn’t every creature with a brain capable of logic seek to preserve this rare gift?

It’s hard to win when you champion fairness, apparently. Hungry people will do shitty things in order to eat. They’ll help raze the ground they stand on if it means a week’s worth of groceries.

“An evil man will burn his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes,” wrote Sun Tzu in The Art of War.

Maybe I’m dull, but I don’t understand the endgame. I mean, come on, we’re all in this together.

Look, I know I’ve had moments, even years, of colossal blindness, but honestly, I don’t understand how so many have visions that don’t extend beyond oil, land, and gold.

On the other hand, real people take to the streets, walk for peace, tie prayer strings on the wrists of police, carry placards, shelter the vulnerable, open their hearts, band together, and lay flowers on the ground. Every day is ground zero. Zero tolerance.

I take heart because I must. Because otherwise, they win.

This morning, I gaze out into the Puriscal hills, sun lighting tree tops, breezes ruffling their fronds – so many trees whose names I do not know – listening to a distant rooster, birds that sound like laughter, the squabble of parrots. I sip the deep, bitter, wondrous coffee that Cheryl grew, peeled, dried in the sun, husked, roasted and ground.

Morning has broken, sang Cat Stevens when he was still Cat Stevens. Like the first morning…He was in a state of wonder. Youthful wonder. He was wonder-full.

So many wonders. The world is wonder-full.

We are miracles. This is a miracle. A miracle that I can converse in real-time with my son in Canada, my friend in Italy, and my ex in Hawaii. That I can spend two-hour segments with my writer friends in Victoria, BC; Champagne, Illinois; Portland, Oregon; London, England; Winnipeg, Manitoba; and Terra Cotta, Ontario, etc. That I can fly here in the middle of winter and write my heart out among rhododendrons and hummingbirds.

I ask myself, if it would save this precious planet, what would I be willing to sacrifice? Travel? Communication with beloveds? We are hooked, tethered to technology for basic functions. And I’m grateful for the connection and ease. But if it all went away tomorrow, guess what? I’d survive. I’d make different choices. Maybe I’d write more on a typewriter or in the many blank pages of my notebooks. Write letters. Raise chickens.

In the world’s wilderness of the unhinged, I manage to live relatively unhindered. That’s a wow.

Isn’t it amazing that humans currently zoom above and around the earth, able to look out through their portals and see how rare and precious life is? Their bones soften, muscles atrophy. They have nothing to push against. Nothing to weigh them. They indeed pay for their knowing with their bodies and even their minds. But up there looking down, they learn what so many ignore or have forgotten, that we have been given this rare and precious planet.

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And don’t forget…

GREECE, October 13 - 22

There’s still space for you!

I don’t recall reading Raymond Carver, but, since his name is synonymous with great writing, I thought I had. (I’m kinda like that – I have ideas about myself, such as that I’ve always enjoyed good health, that aren’t quite true.)

For two weeks, I’m at Casa Mismac in the Costa Rican mountains at a self-directed writing retreat. Since every hour cannot be filled with the business of writing (I try, but after the evening meal, I’m spent), I balance my time with reading. There is a bountiful library here from which I selected a book of short stories by Raymond Carver.

Oh my. The simplicity, the bareness, the absence of extravagant prose drives home every single sentence. The one story that got me right between the heart valves is “A Small, Good Thing.” Although the slow death of an eight-year-old boy is unbearably tragic, Carver manages to hold the reader in his palm. The offering of an overworked and lonely baker to the grieving parents reminds us how one person’s simple act can soften the heart. A small, good thing.

On May 25, 1986, more than six million people formed a single human chain stretching from New York City to Long Beach, California. For fifteen unforgettable minutes, “Hands Across America” turned unity into something visible.

I consider the resistance during the Second World War, the will and power of good people to lean into what is just and fair. To lift the lid, peel back the curtain, and insist on truth.

It’s 2026, and all bets are off now. People are afraid. Even if one doesn’t read the news or watch the endless flow of horrors across their screens, it filters in. And yet, thousands take their lives in their small hands, go out into the streets and chase masked men from schoolyards. Priests, bishops, imams, rabbis, school teachers, labourers, artists, and movie stars risk everything to insist on justice.

Yes, the world is crowded with horrors, so more than ever we need those small, good things to help us through these dark times. Tragically, murders are often what fuel us into action, but the light in this darkness shines brighter yet as literally millions turn small, good things into groundswell movements. And despite spurious spins by certain parties, it’s become impossible to look away.

So, let us be truly human. To ourselves and to each other. Love extravagantly. Reach out your hand. Find five dollars to donate. Share your cake.

News:

I’m leading five workshops in February for Write Around the World. Two wild mind sessions, a session on creating a “hinge line,” one on desire, and one on dialogue. Intrigued? Check it out here. But there are literally dozens of opportunities from remarkably skilled facilitators who’ve volunteered to lead workshops next month. Join us to broaden and deepen your practice - ekphrastic, poetic, memoir, and much more!

Don’t forget my year-round weekly, biweekly, and full-day offerings. Check them out here.

There are still a few spots left for the immersive writing retreat this October in Greece. 9 full days by the Ionian Sea doing what you love. Find the details here.

Happy writing, and hope to see you soon!

Deepam

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A family is as fragile as a window.

My brother broke free early from our father’s scorn. He wanted freedom, free love, and free speech. He grew his hair, his beard, and his following.

Before he left the house, he’d already left the family home. Decades and thousands of miles later, he told me why. Explained for me why, whenever my mother caught a glimpse of a long-haired, bearded man, she’d exclaim, “It’s my Ricky,” in a voice choked with hope and regret and loss.

Ricky was unfettered, restless and reckless, broke a few laws, his blood hot and his façade cool, his temper razor-sharp, his wit often regrettable.

But his heart.

When he was only two, he was locked for an eternity in a full-body cast, burned from boiling water in which hot dogs cooked.

That.

Our father once confessed to me with a strange pride that as he lay on his wartime cot dreaming of his future family, he envisioned only daughters. No sons, he said. These daughters wouldn’t be babies or children, no, they’d be full-grown women. Beautiful, like you, he said. And I got two of them. I understood I was to receive this as a compliment. But what of the two sons that preceded these two now full-grown women, now full-grown men?

A few years before my brother died, he told me how our father found only fault with him, that nothing he did or said pleased him. So he made a conscious decision to become a juvenile delinquent. After being sent for a psychological evaluation on account of his troublesome nature, which revealed he possessed a genius IQ, our father showed no signs of acceptance.

When a small child finds themselves alone in a cold hospital room, their burning body encased in plaster and unable to move, their parents denied visitation because children cry when they leave, what does that child know for certain? Loneliness. Pain. Abandonment.

A family is as fragile as a window. Even the auspicious birth of a child can cause it to crack. I know this. When my child was born, every cell that comprised who I was shaped itself around him. I understand that in such cases, a man might feel abandoned by his partner, and in some cases, the woman feels forced to choose.

My mother chose my father and lost her firstborn son.

“It’s my Ricky,” she’d cry.

“He’s in Florida, Mom,” I’d tell her. Or BC or California.

Her face would rearrange itself, her eyes regain focus, her breath restored. “Of course,” she’d say, and lift her chin. But I heard a crack that sounded like glass. Beneath her ribs. Beneath her brave smile. Perhaps the same sound my brother’s heart made when it cracked in 2009. When the world lost him. Those who loved him lost him.

After four (but who’s counting?) wives, he found the one. That was a funny story, so I’ll tell it. Because Ricky had fallen in love with this woman he met in the late 80s, I mean really fallen this time, met his match, and so on, he wanted his best friend to meet her. His friend had heard all about how hot, how delicious, how thrilling this woman was. When he finally saw her for the first time, his mouth opened more than necessary when he said, “Dude, that’s my mother.”

As it happens, it turned out well for all of them for quite some time. After the initial shock, of course.

Ricky and Cathe stayed together through thick and thinness for twenty years until his heart had a different idea.

In keeping with the kind of grown man he was, Ricky also had other ideas. They saved him, installing state-of-the-art parts, but it promised to be a long, hard road to recovery. It would have been. But there was hope. He had an excellent chance.

However.

There he was again, immobilized in a hospital bed. Trapped this time by wires and tubes and drugs. The difference was that when they brought him up out of a coma, he had agency. He was sixty-two, not two, capable of deciding whether to stay or go.

Despite heroic efforts, he chose to go. We all sensed it, that straining through the night to untether himself in the silent dark of the coma, they re-induced. His determination, his will to go home a powerful force.

A brilliant musician, he was by turns wry, nasty, generous, guarded, and loving. He was both an entertainer and a hermit, a shitty father and, to me, a pretty cool brother.

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There must have been some thought, some reckoning, if merely in the back cave of their minds. When they dredged the sea for treasure.

I am in a shop in Tlaquepaque, hovering over baskets brimming with scoured starfish, welks, sand dollars, murex, baby conchs, cowries, and sundials. All emptied of their inhabitants. My sister and I have come to Sedona, she to learn Reiki drumming, me to sit among the twisting junipers in the red hills in the vortex spinning from the earth.

It’s a spiritual place, this town. That’s how it’s known. For meditators and visionaries.

Among stones, crystals, and scents of nature, these sea creatures are piled and still. They are beautiful, of course, these treasures we covet to adorn our altars. But they are dead.

My stomach is no longer hungry, and my heart hurts. This is but a single shop; one in thousands, perhaps, that sells sacrificial creatures to decorate our bathrooms.

Golden starfish slid through the shallow waters of a quiet Grand Cayman bay, their movement nearly undetectable. My son collected them to create a community group, but they glided away, back into deeper waters where they were safe from interference.

Queen Conch take five years to mature into those magnificent flanged beings who live on the sea floor. Fisherman in Cayman hack the point of their shells that anchor them, yank out the living flesh, and toss the empty pink and white shells back into the sea. You can find bleached piles of them in an underwater graveyard just beyond their protected area.

My sister and I have eaten Cayman conch in a dish they call Cracked Conch, which isn’t cracked in any way I can see. It’s pounded tender, breaded, and fried.

There’s always a cost, isn’t there, to our hunger?

I’m standing in that shop with basket after basket crowded with creatures that could nestle in my palm. My sister may not notice my tears. She’s moved to a shelf where amethyst, quartz, malachite, hematite, and obsidian have been sculpted into pleasant shapes. These gems and stones that promise mental acuity, protection, an open heart, and abundance have been procured through pick axes and explosives.

My sister chooses a smooth globe of rose quartz and pays at the cash.

Touching me on the shoulder, she says, “Let’s go get some lunch. They have great vegan food here.”

I invite you to take the sentence stem, “There must have been…” and write for 5 to 10 minutes. You are most welcome to put your piece in the comment box below. I’ll be sure to respond to what is strong and memorable.

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This year, December brings more to celebrate. Not only the delight of wrapping gifts for my son and his partner and stringing up fairy lights, but there are also a couple of events that are giving my novel a boost.

At 2 pm on December 9^th, Cece Scott will interview me live on her podcast, Creative Aging, Books & Ideas. ZOOM LINK: All are welcome to join in.

FRED KERNER BOOK AWARD

Fred Kerner was a devoted and longtime CAA member. An Honorary President of the association until his passing in 2011 at 90, Fred was an author, journalist, editor, teacher, and mentor. He wrote more than twelve books and also wrote for magazines, radio and TV, and he gave unstintingly of his time to assist emerging writers.

The Fred Kerner Book Award is awarded annually to a Canadian Authors member who has the best overall book published in the previous calendar year, including fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.

On December 13 at 1 pm, the Canadian Authors Association hosts the Fred Kerner Book Award announcement. It’s also live and online, with readings from shortlisted authors, Myna Wallin, Jen Currin, Christina Myers, Lorri Neilsen Glenn, and yours truly, after which the winner will be announced.

JOIN US HERE

Feeding the Community

Two wood bison were gifted to the Chippewas of Rama First Nations from a farmer who was moving the herd. The bulls were wild and ferocious and could not be relocated. With ceremony and deep respect, my son organized the harvesting of these magnificent beasts.

Ben Benson wrote:

~Blood sweat and tears~

After these 6 days, I learned what that phrase actually means, and i did it alongside my brother Caleb Kinew Nini Musgrave.

This experience has taught me how far I can push myself if I want something bad enough.

All I wanted was to feed my community.

Which I found out meant long 12hr days, learning the hard way, and pushing through when you just want to collapse.

This picture is a symbol of community, perseverance, and brotherhood.

What an honour to live the life that I have.

This is what Caleb Kinew Nini Musgrave wrote:

It started for me with a question from a friend.

Several weeks later, we were standing in a field with a herd of Wood Bison. Waiting for the perfect shots to take two bulls, to feed his community.

An hour later, 3 shots in total were taken, and we began the 6 day journey of cleaning, skinning, and butchering these two beautiful beings into meals for the elders, for those in need, for the community events, and more.

So many people got to bear witness to this. Friends of mine who I have known for years. Total strangers to me, who have now become good friends. Babies in their strollers. Kindergarteners with their classes. Elders and families. So many people.

A lot of people were involved from before, during and after the moment that the first bull hit the ground. People like Andrew from Hiawatha, and my two good friends named Chris. The hard working badass Serena. My clan brother Brian. All sorts of folks from Rama Band Council and Administration. The Fire Department. The Teachers and Principal of the schools in Rama FN.

But one person above all needs a lot of recognition. He handled the lion’s share of the work. From logistics (communicating with the bison farmers, communicating with community and other stakeholders, organizing the locations for processing the bulls, people to help, etc), to the physical and mental exertion of getting these precious animals broken down into food for his community. All the while also coordinating a land-based learning class over the weekend. This dude handled 12 hour days for pretty much 6 days straight, with not a single hour of that time not being full of hard, back breaking work.

I’m proud of the work he put in. I’m proud of the determination he put forth. I’m proud of the effort he made to succeed. And succeed he did.

I am honored to have been involved with this project, but at the end of the day, all I did was pull the trigger and make some cuts.

Without Ben Benson, this endeavor would have been for naught.

Gchii-miigwetch for your energy, Ben. Gchii-miigwetch for everything, Dude.

To say that I am moved beyond words is an understatement. Pride and awe. That’s it.

And we have 35 pounds of liver in our freezer.

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In a recent workshop, I offered the poem Halley’s Comet by Stanley Kunitz, with the prompt: “Your character believes it’s the end of the world - literally or metaphorically.”

One of the invitations of an AWA workshop is to either use the prompt however you choose or ignore it and write whatever occurs to you. As a facilitator, I’m bound to write alongside my participants, even when I don’t feel like it. (True story)

You will see, by the following piece I wrote in response, I kind of did both.

Halley’s Comet

Another proclamation announcing the end of the world goes by without a blink. It’s not as though we don’t believe it. Since it isn’t likely to arrive from the heavens, we’re fixing it up ourselves.

Perhaps no one was worthy to be taken by the rapture in September. Or maybe we were wrong to assume bombs, guns, hurricanes, fires, and floods were responsible for the thousands drained of life, and those were the ones airlifted to heaven, after all. The innocent, blameless ones. In any case, we’re doing a damn fine job of ending the world as we’ve known it. No comet or Armageddon needed.

The Hindus call it Kali Yuga—the age of darkness—which signals the “erosion of righteousness.” Kali Yuga is the cycle of discord, greed, and chaos, so I guess we’re right on schedule. Vishnu is supposed to restore balance, they say, during the cycle of Satya Yuga, which could begin anywhere from five years from now to 430 years from now. Hmmm. At this rate, I’m not convinced there’ll be anything left to balance in five years. But hold on—some Hindus say it could be any day now.

My hope is that we won’t need another comet pass-by or the hand of god to stop the madness. I’m going to go with Douglas Adams’ answer to it all, which is 42.

And give thanks for all the fish.

Fred Kerner Award

The Fred Kerner Book Award is awarded annually to a Canadian Authors member who has the best overall book published in the previous calendar year, including fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. There are five finalists.

This year, my novel, “What the Living Do,” Regal House Publishing, 2024, is among them. The winning title will be announced on December 13.

So that’s pretty cool. Not the end of the world for my wee tale, it seems.

GREECE, 2026

It’s filling up, which has been a surprise and delight, given that we’re still almost a year out. We have room for about three more, so if you’re keen, you might not want to delay.

WORKSHOPS on Zoom

Mondays and Thursdays, 12-2 Eastern

Every other Tuesday, 7-9 pm Eastern

Once a month, a deep-dive from 1 – 5 pm Eastern

and finally…

WriteOn! is in its final wondrous week. You can still sign up for any and all of the remaining days… 7:30 a.m. in 4 time zones, which means you can write with others for free as many as four times a day.

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Rachel Thompson has a lovely newsletter called “Writerly Love Letters.” Recently, I was drawn to a technique she introduced.

She writes:

A hinge line is a small sentence that shifts the page’s tone without overtly announcing the shift.

It often:

•Echoes an image but changes its weather

•Reuses one charged word in a new register

•Inserts a brief present-tense aside that tilts the voice

Hinge lines help anywhere tone pivots fast, from comic scene to consequence, debate to decision, wonder to dread.

So I gave it a whirl:

There’ve been a lot of storms lately. Lightning, along with the rain and wind, as though the sky needs to let loose all the grief it ever held. Storms rage inside and outside. A different sort of rage than that of those who refuse to identify the skin of self, left flapping.

It’s not the sky’s fault. And not Goddess’s either. Although yes, she is also weeping, so her tears mingle with the deluge.

They’re afraid, that’s all; the ones with masks, clubs, and handcuffs. Whatever they believe now. Well…

And the ones fixed on films, their gazes glassy, glossy, watching blood bounce like tiny rubber balls. It’s all fake.

Say it, “Fake. Fake. Fake.”

So I touch my aging breasts. These, I tell the mirror, are not fake.

The storm takes a breather. It’s been doing that, taking long breaths, and then spewing out all it took in.

I’m repeating myself, I know.

Step inside. The fire is bright and warms most of the house. I have blankets—wool, fuzzy, quilted, and ones filled with feathers. You are welcome. I’ll put on the kettle and we’ll watch the storm from inside. Maybe we’ll be lucky and the power will go out.

I mean it.

We need the power to go out.

Workshops

Mondays and Thursdays online from 12 noon to 2 pm EASTERN

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