Stories
Remarkable women, freed by war
It wasn’t a conversation I’d expected to have. I was visiting my mother-in-law Mary, who was 100 years old. This was in 2022, and she was ensconced in the apartment at the seniors residence where she’d lived since she’d turned 90. As we talked, she surprised me by speaking about her time in the math […]
Ghost stories and zombies
I recently wrote a piece for publishing insider Jane Friedman about turning anecdotes into stories. It’s a how-to post for writers—and a behind-the-scenes look for readers interested in the writing craft. When I went into my journals to look out an anecdote for Jane, I found a wealth of incidents to choose from. The one […]
With PTSD in the family, every day is Remembrance Day
I never quite trusted my father’s stories about World War II. My dad, known as Ron. Officially he was Clarence Roland, but very few men named Clarence ever call themselves that. My father always said he signed up the day war was declared. He was 22 and served overseas from the end of 1939 until […]
Book Review: Ghosts of Ortona by Ian Cosh (Part Two)
I asked anthropologist Ian Cosh why he’d decided to interview Canadian war veterans for his first book. There was a pause. “Gosh,” he said. “Yeah, you know, like, it’s… some of these are the sorts of things where I might remember something more that I can email you later?” We laughed a bit, since Cosh’s […]
Book Review: Ghosts of Ortona by Ian Cosh
Main character energy. It’s a new term for an old urge: the need to feel that you’re a good person who matters. You’re at the centre of the action, the protagonist, a hero. You’re not a little person tossed around by a big bored universe. Instead, you have agency. (And 10,000 followers on TikTok.)[1] I […]
Writing Tip: Notice what you notice. (Thoughts for readers, too.)
If you teach creative writing, you may have faced it. A student stalks through the door before class, chin forward like Reese Witherspoon motoring through the hallways in Election. We might as well call the student Reese. After slinging into a chair, Reese tells you that someone in the class is going to steal the essence […]
Book Review: After Covid by Jason Gale
Remember the start of the Covid-19 pandemic? Six years ago, most of us were in lockdown. No school. Working from home. A mysterious new virus was killing tens of thousands around the world, one spread by… infected people touching fruits and vegetables in the supermarket? So you had to scrub your fruit and veg when […]
Book Review: Gitwaałtk by Crystal AJ Smith (and some words from her publicist about reaching readers)
The story opens with the narrator driving home along the highway from vancouver, the so-called highway of tears where her Twin and so many other Indigenous women have disappeared. Her Twin went missing four years before, and now her body has been found. “vancouver” and “Twin” aren’t typos, but represent writer Crystal AJ Smith’s decision […]
Returned damaged: Review of David Nasaw’s The Wounded Generation (part two)
I always pause when a new section in a non-fiction book begins, “Five years later.” Five years is a long time in our short human lives, and even if those five years pass without historic conflicts, we still experience a series of fascinating, traumatic and often life-changing events as we ricochet through our allotted three […]
Book Review: The Wounded Generation by David Nasaw
My first novel was called Aftermath. I started writing it when I was 17 and finished it when I was 22. Luckily it wasn’t published, but I mention it because it’s set in a veterans’ hospital after World War II. Its main characters are men who’ve been so badly injured they aren’t going to make it […]
Crowdsourced tips for a house purge (plus a few weird extras)
1. I heard a story about friends of friends who decided to downsize into a condo. They’d raised their family in the same house without ever moving, so the place was packed with all manner of everything, including boxes they hadn’t opened in years. It took them five or six months to sort through it, […]
Hamnet reviewed: a book, a movie and the plague, ancient and modern
Exactly six years ago, in late March of 2020, I was finally starting to feel better after what they said was a bad case of the flu. I’d gone to the doctor for the first time three weeks earlier feeling sicker than I had in years. My own doctor wasn’t in the clinic when I […]
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