1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
It’s my first book, so I’d say it changed it entirely. Writers who have published books always advise you not to expect your first book to change your life, but I’m going to let it.
2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
While I’ve tried to connect with poetry, it’s prose’s formal continuity—either in fiction and non-fiction—that most resembles the way I experience consciousness, which is what I think of as writing and reading: the delivery of a consciousness through text.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
Projects build up and on to each other like competing vines and I’m the house. It’s hard to see from the window but sometimes I go for a walk around the perimeter.
4 - Where does a work of prose usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
I’m excited to not be able to answer this, because I think each project need its own process. Like each person has a personality, each project can only be itself, and so I’m constantly meeting it where it’s at, probing gently.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Yes, I’d love to. I’m always starting up a writing group or collaborating on a musical.
I’ve lived in a small town for quite some time, but am moving to Vancouver, where I hope to be a part of regular communities of writers interacting with each other and their readers.
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
I’m very curious about narrative distance: point of view and how it can be better manipulated to reflect and examine consciousness, which is the great mystery of being human.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
Writers are reflectors, predictors and collectors. We have to be a little selfish, reclusive and observant while also engaged and meddling. At least, this is my personality and I’m a writer.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
My experience working with Leigh Nash at Assembly Press was phenomenal. Every edit was a carefully positioned query that opened up a window into the soul of the work. That being said, I think you need to learn to be your own editor until you know what your project is.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
My dad used to walk by me reading and tell me to look up from the page every once in a while. He meant it literally—I’ve since continued to progressively lose my eyesight—but I took it figuratively.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (short stories to essays)? What do you see as the appeal?
I find it easy and generative, though this makes me a little bit of a squirelly writer. I store nuts here and there and run around shouting about it. In the end, I’m trying to cultivate an energy that allows me to both sit down and write and also send off what I’ve written, and if it’s going to be by losing my chill, so be it.
11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I’ve been a full-time teacher for the past decade, and it took me a while to figure out how to make that work. It does right now: I wake up at 5am and write (or do writerly things) for an hour and a half. Then I try to return to the desk or the work at some point in the evening. I’m quitting teaching so we’ll see what happens.
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I turn to books that exist already. I also turn to my notebooks. Or I just get my fingers going on the keys or my hand wrapped around a pen. It’s always in me, somewhere.
13 - What was your last Hallowe'en costume?
Oh! I hosted one half of a progressive Halloween party, where your costume had to evolve between houses. Three friends and I were construction workers who turned into the bejewelled Louvre robbers. It was a timely costume.
14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
I’d actually like to say no. Of course the world influences me, but I’m writing a book, and I couldn’t agree with McFadden more.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Miriam Toews and Sheila Heti are two Canadian writers who have taught me, through their books (and Sheila’s mentorship!) so much of what writing means to me. I’m always finding new crushes but I’m loyal to those authors I found early.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Write a novel! Like, not a fragmented one that is also an interconnected short story collection.
17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
I’m going through it right now: what’s not a teacher? Then I think about a college instructor or university professor, but that’s a teacher. I’d like to be a student for a while (but that’s a teacher).
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Books! I want to make what I love. I want to give back and see my book cuddled up on the shelf.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I’m reading Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume series the day they publish in English—we’re now at 4 of 7 volumes and they’re not slowing down. I’m trying to watch 100 films this year but am at a scant 20 and it’s May. My recent favourite was Peter Hujar’s Day (Ira Sachs 2025). It changed my journalling practice.
20 - What are you currently working on?
That novel! And also an inside-out text about my abandoned first novel.
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
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