Coming up! I hope you'll join me online or in-person this Thursday, September 21st in Calgary as I pass the Calgary Distinguished Writers' Program Residency on to the wonderful Francine Cunningham. I'm reading all new work, including (gasp) some fiction! We're going to have a grand time. All the details for both parts of this hybrid event can be found here. 

Earlier this month I was thrilled to learn that Moldovan Hotel has been shortlisted for a 2023 Vine Award for Canadian Jewish Literature. Do take a look at the incredible full list here! All the mazel to my co-listers, especially Adam Sol (of Broken Dawn Blessings) and Aaron Kreuter (of Shifting Baseline Syndrome) in the poetry category! 

L'Shanah Tovah, everybody! May 5784 usher in a safe and sustainable future. Wishing you all a peaceful and sweet year ahead <3

What a whirlwind - I can't believe my residency at the University of Calgary is complete. If I have my numbers right, I offered forty-one manuscript consultations, organized nineteen events, and wrote one novel (novella, maybe? but still) in eight glorious months. Phew! I've learned so much from this experience and have a little thank-you for everyone I met included in the video below. 

In even better news, I'm passing the torch to Francine Cunningham, an award-winning Indigenous writer who was recently longlisted for the Carol Shields Prize. Best of all, Francine and I studied together during our MFA programs at UBC, and so it's going to be an absolute riot to perform together at the Hello/Goodbye event on September 21st.  Tickets and livestream information coming right up! This won't be farewell to Calgary by any stretch of the imagination, and I'm very excited to see you there. (How is next month September already? I'm counting down, but not too fast!)

I'll be in amiskwacîwâskahikan next week as part of an exchange with the University of Alberta's Department of English and Film Studies. It's been ages since I've been to Edmonton so please do come say hello if you're in town! I'm so looking forward to reading with their Writer-in-Residence, Bänoo Zan. I'm guest lecturing for Marilyn Dumont's poetry class today as a teaser, too - what an honour! Find more information about our event next week through this link. If you're planning to attend in person, please scent-reduce and wear a mask. For those of you who would prefer to attend online, we're recording this event for later; I'll have more details on how you can access it soon. Huge thanks to Jessica Leeper and Thomas Wharton for all their work putting this visit together.

I'm so looking forward to this slate of upcoming events in Mohkinstis! The two-week countdown is on! Each of these in-person events is free and open to the public, with the exception of the Writers' Guild of Alberta workshop. Please, please wear a mask if you are attending. If you can't attend and would be interested in online reduxes, drop me a line and I'll see about making it happen. All accessibility information is through the registration links. 

On the evening of February 6th, I'm leading a workshop on the University of Calgary campus for poets and writers at all ages and stages called "The Woods." Let's get specific about your writing; I'm here to help you forget everything you've ever been told about being "too niche," or everything you've ever feared in that regard. ​Register for the waitlist here. Huge thanks to the Taylor Family Digital Library for their support for this event, which is astonishingly already full.

On February 7th in the evening, the Writers' Guild of Alberta is generously hosting me for a workshop on figuring out when a poem is done. (It haunts us! How do we know when?!?) This workshop is free for members of the WGA. Register for the waitlist here. 

At noon on February 8th, come hang out with me and Outreach Engagement Librarian Christena McKillop! We'll talk about applying for residencies, the extremely winding road of being a working writer, how much I love libraries, and more. Big thanks again to the Taylor Family Library - and Christena! - for this one. Register here!

And that evening on February 8th, join me at the Alexandra Writers' Centre for a workshop on setting boundaries as a writer and poet. Register here!

On the 9th and 10th, I'll see you at the events for Jamaica Kincaid! Find out more about this incredible opportunity and Professor Kincaid's visit to Calgary here. 

Safe and protected new Gregorian year to us all, friends. I hope you're emerging from holiday time either rested up and recovered, or ready to rest and recover from the holidays themselves. One of my  workshops last month was on that very topic—sharing some grounding and creative self-protection exercises for the wonderful peer mentors at Skipping Stone, one of my favourite community organizations. If you're looking for ways to protect and build the absolutely critical movement for trans rights on the prairies, please consider supporting their work.

My residency with the Calgary Distinguished Writers Program continues! I'm grateful for how they've supported my request to offer an overwhelming majority of online events due to the pandemic. Come log on with me on January 16th for "Parallel Time," a free writing session I'm trying out as an experiment. No facilitation, no prompts, and no group chat! This will be a completely voice-off experience with cameras optional, where we are just getting work done together. Bring those projects you can't seem to carve out time for, or life admin lurking on your to-do list, or just come spend some quiet time with other writers in a way that might cut down on any screen-time burnout you might be feeling. If you benefit from body doubling or do well in online environments with minimal distraction, this might be a good fit for you, too. Register for Parellel Time here. 

Now that we're back from the university holiday break, free manuscript consultations are open for booking again! You can sign up for a consultation spot here. These are very chill! Feel free to sign up even if you don't have a draft you'd like feedback on. Come with an idea or a question! If you're feeling stuck, we can talk that through together, too. Last semester was quite packed; since we're booking ahead into the spring now, it's best to sign up sooner rather than later if you're interested!

I'll be back in Calgary in February for a short slate of free, in-person workshops; more news on that soon. Most importantly, I'll be there to celebrate and learn from Harvard professor and legendary author Jamaica Kincaid, the incoming Distinguished Visiting Writer at UCalgary. If you are attending in-person events (while hopefully still masking! if so, I appreciate you!), you could join us for a free evening with Professor Kincaid, hosted by Giller Prize winner Suzette Mayr. If you can't attend in person (maybe because you're choosing to stay home and protect yourselves, or the immunocompromised, disabled, sick, and/or very young people in your lives), you can register for the livestream here, and I'll be glad to know you're online with us. 

See you soon! Lots to look forward to now that the calendar has flipped. Desperately wishing us a collectively safer year ahead!

I had an absolutely beautiful evening co-presenting with outgoing CDWP Writer-in-Residence Teresa Wong on Monday night. If you couldn't make it or tune in, you can watch the replay here! Professional captions are embedded in the video. You won't want to miss this glimpse of Teresa's gorgeous forthcoming work; you can find my reading, including a sneaky announcement about my new project at 26:55, and Teresa's presentation at 44:25. 

I'm so lucky to be back at Shelf Life Books, a beloved indie who hosted one of the book launches for Moldovan Hotel, on Thursday night! (And with such an excellent line-up!) Livestream is available by registration or you can join us in-person; Zoom auto-captions will be available for the livestream. Full event information is here! The fastest way to find the accessibility information for Shelf Life is to scroll down past the map on this page. Hope to see you then - it's so wonderful to be back. 

So...remember when I said I hoped I'd have a reason to visit Mohkinstis/Calgary again soon? Scant days ago? It's an absolute and total honour to be succeeding Teresa Wong and Marjorie Celona as the University of Calgary Distinguished Writing Program's Canadian Writer-in-Residence. As Marjorie steps down from the role for important reasons, I'm very grateful to them for their kind words and the chance to take on the position for the remainder of 2022-23.

Please get in touch to book a manuscript consultation (they're free!), or an event! Not in the city? Not a problem! I'm conducting much of this residency virtually, with pandemic safety and accessibility in mind. It's important to me to connect with writers and communities in, around, and beyond Calgary. 

I hope you'll join us on October 17th on the captioned Facebook livestream, or briefly in person (I'm still masking & boosting - I hope you are too) at the cSPACE King Edward Studio Theatre to celebrate Teresa's residency and kickstart mine. I'm so grateful to my referees who supported my application to this program, and I'm so excited to share more with you about my proposed projects soon.

Over a year of Moldovan Hotel, now! I was lucky to celebrate with photographer Chelsea Yang-Smith, who took this portrait on a cloudy day in the foothills. I don't know about you, but this wasn't the shmita year I thought it would be. I only wish the themes of this text were less and less immediate for many peoples, everywhere. I'm grateful to readers and reviewers like rob mclennan for their careful devotion to what I know is a difficult collection to visit in a churning news cycle. When I started writing this book in 2017, I couldn't have imagined how poems like Typhus or You Are My Hiding Place would change in resonance. I also didn't imagine the pandemic, which wretchedly continues—so while I loved Mohkinstis/Calgary, I missed my family terribly, and even a quick flight is still a flight! At the end of July, I moved back to Saskatoon, Treaty Six Cree Territory and the homelands of the Métis. It's a joy to be home after twelve years away. Keinayinhora, I'll be able to visit those mountains and frozen waterfalls and wonderful independent bookstores safely again (and friends on Unceded Coast Salish Territories, who I also miss terribly!) soon. Shana Tovah to everyone as we enter a new year on Jewish time. May it be the sweetness we all need, and then some.