What’s her story …

The Short Story of Her

I grew up in Ottawa, splashing in the tides of cement pools and local bays and skating on outdoor rinks. I loved winter as a kid, digging out snow cubbies on the front lawn and riding toboggans down dangerous slopes into gullies and ravines and parking lots. 

Winters lost their appeal once I was a teen, though, with boots and toques and mittens making for an embarrassing assortment of accoutrements for anyone LARPing as an adult.

By the time I was an actual adult, I felt too unhinged to settle for snowbanks, so I moved to NYC to experience whether all the world really was a stage and if I could audition for a role. I attended a theatre conservatory, lived in an attic studio in the Dakota, and worked off-off Broadway several times over. My twenties were an era for which I’ll always be grateful no matter the sacrifices.

When I got tired of spinning the wheel of rejection, I submitted to a formal education in Comparative Literature (I wanted to put my bilingualism to use) and I somehow read enough to earn my PhD. It was a fulfilling chapter to close my thirties.

I’ve been writing fiction for over a decade now, and I’ve self-published some of that work since 2012. Writing is my bliss. I finally came to that profound understanding after all these years of stubborn commitment to storytelling. No one ever explained the way to being a writer was by writing. Now that my hair is shifting from a shade of aged pennies to brilliant silver coins, I’m unabashed at my purse full of wisdom. I still mostly feel like the eight-year-old in the picture, anyhow, so make of that what you will.