Tag: News

A New Phase in an Unpredictable Writing Career

My writing career started an unbelievable 25 years ago in an unbelievable place: banking. I can’t say it was by accident either. I started university as cluelessly as many (most?) students, thinking only that I was suited for the corporate life and with hardly a thought for what the content of a satisfying work day […]

Zahed Haftlang’s Big Idea

The first time I met Zahed Haftlang was over two years ago, in connection with an article I wrote for Vancouver Magazine called Blood Brothers. That story was one of hope and determination. An Iranian boy soldier during the Iran-Iraq War, Haftlang saved the life of an Iraqi soldier, Nadjah Aboud, on the battlefield. Twenty years […]

Ottawa Writers Festival

AND ALL IS ALWAYS NOW Pleased to be reading 8:30 PM Sunday May 1st at the Mayfair Theater in Ottawa, at 1074 Bank Street. From the program notes: Join us for three stunning evocations of how the future incorporates the past into the present. These forward-looking novelists examine personal journeys through our collective histories. In Progress , […]

Praise for The Blue Light Project

The Blue Light Project has garnered a lot of press attention this past week. And it’s almost all been very positive. The book is an Amazon.ca New and Notable Title as well as an Amazon.ca Spring Book Feature. Author profiles have now run in the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and National Post. But the […]

The brutal honesty of Doug Coupland

A fantastic, supportive quote has come in from UBC English professor Laura Moss, who is also an editor at the literary quarterly Canadian Literature, and the author of Canadian Literature in English: Texts and Contexts In the this quote, Moss compares my work to Coupland. I’m flattered by that comarison, as I admire Coupland a lot. And […]

Soft Skull Galleys Arrive

Good mail day from the US today. Soft Skull galleys arrive, with a cover based on work by Jerm IX, the once prolific Vancouver street artist who is now a prolific Toronto street artist. Oddly, the big box of books came on the same day as a smaller box. In it, a sampler of smoked […]

Naturally Hazardous

Feminine beauty is, by virtue of having no definition, controversial. Hold up an image you find exemplary and expect to get everything from murmurs of approval to charges of sexism from virtually any random sampling of people. Beauty, it seems, will always be more of a question than it is an answer. The photographers in […]