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My short stories and essays have appeared in Chatelaine, The New Quarterly, Little Fiction, Literary Mama, Stealing Time, and Hip Mama, and in the anthologies Body & Soul: Stories for Skeptics and Seekers, Outcrops: Northeastern Ontario Short Stories, The M Word: Conversations About Motherhood. I'm the co-creator with Richard Sheridan Willis of the critically-acclaimed one-man show Strolling Player, and I’m a creative writing coach with Sarah Selecky Writing School.
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The Longer Story |
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I’ve tried to write or longed to write or resisted writing or feared writing or, finally, actually written for the greater part of 35 years. I’ve published numerous short stories and essays in literary journals and anthologies, written a few learner novels, and my debut novel, The Mother Act, is due out from Random House Canada in 2023. Along the way I've learned a great deal about the creative process, how to surrender to it, how to put myself in its path and allow myself to integrate with it in a way that's sustainable, nourishing, and supportive--of both myself and my creativity.
Words and stories, truth and fiction: there's never been any other work I wanted to do. My work explores, to put it broadly, what it is to be female. The complexity and depth of friendship and sisterhood, the emotional heritage passed on from mothers to daughters, the models of what is possible and expected, ambivalence around marriage and motherhood, religious tradition and the limits it sets, the conflicting pulls of art and relationship, the struggle to break free of what we've been given to create what we yearn for. Alongside the rugged landscape of the Northern Ontario bush where I grew up and the New York City streets and Toronto neighbourhoods and West Virginia mountains where I've emerged into myself, these are currently my terrain. As a creative writing coach with Sarah Selecky Writing School, I also help stuck writers stop dreading their writing sessions and start writing their novels with flow and ease.
I'm delighted to be represented by Arielle Datz at Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary Agency. My husband, Richard, is an actor and the Artistic Director of the St. Lawrence Shakespeare Festival. Our daughters, Maia and Aphra, are 14 and 12. We live in Eastern Ontario, Canada, in a small town on the banks of the St. Lawrence River. 
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