Spring/Summer 2014 Recap

So much I haven’t updated– I’m an inconsistent blogger. But unrepentant! Life is busy with living…. May was WisCon 38 and I was a guest of honour alongside N.K. Jemisin. Enroute to the convention my partner and I arranged to stay a few days in Chicago, and what a beautiful city! Not usually the type to…

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Innsbruck, Austria EACLALS conference

Firstly, thank you to my hosts, the University of Innsbruck, for inviting me here. It is a privilege to visit this beautiful city in the Alps, and meet with the many scholars and writers from many lands! Flight from Vancouver arrived in Munich, the first shop I encountered outside the airport was a Starbucks. The…

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Prairie Road Trip circa Early 21st C

How a person chooses to travel is not free from considerations about environmental impact. The effects of global warming caused by human actions cannot be ignored. I am far from leading a low-impact life in terms of my carbon footprint. Very few of us are in car culture North America. It is difficult to reconcile….…

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Three Months, Ten Days and a trip to PEI

Sounds like a torrid affair! But it’s only that I’ve been so very busy…. I’m hoping to get back to more regular blogging. We shall see! Much has happened in the past three months. I’ve conducted a webinar for the WIR at Athabasca University as well as critiquing submissions and working with my mentees. Attended…

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And she smiled

Everyone I had spoken to on the matter had told me that the Louvre could not be viewed in one day, but I had no idea how enormous the museum was until I approached it from outside and saw the long wings of the former royal palace…. Holy crow, I thought. Lookit the size of…

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Oh, Chateau!

How lovely, how odd, how complicated and delightful…. How do we find ourselves in this time and space, a tourist, a holiday-maker, in a enormous chateau in Dordogne, France? First of all the chateau is enormous– built in 1840 for the Duke “who won Algeria and Morocco for France”…!!!! Class, race, colonialism, imperialism all converge…

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Je me regrette!

I have been so busy I have not posted on my Sundays. But, je ne me regrette pas, because tomorrow– well, today, in fact, daughter and I leave for France! We are “picking up” my mum along the way (via airplane/airport) and will be spending the next two weeks on the road! Tres bien! It is…

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The Artful Business of Writing

It’s difficult to comprehend fully, but I’ve been a writer for over twenty years. Unbelievable! Weird! By hook and by crook I’ve somehow managed to live off my writerly income, but this has been only just manageable because my ex-husband and I share our resources to raise the children and maintain family. I know I…

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WisCon 35, Hotel, Cable TV

WisCon 35 concluded—what a lovely weekend meeting up with friends from previous Cons, making new friends, and talking, laughing! Nisi Shawl gave a lovely GOH speech and I loved how she situated the idea of genius as not something individual and anomalous, but arising from and because of community, and that it is possible for…

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