March 4, 2026

Mysteries of Pittsburgh

Due to a winter storm, my short trip to Pittsburgh for the American Booksellers Association Winter Institute was even shorter than scheduled, but oh, we made the most of it. My publisher House of Anansi Press set up meetings with delightful and inspiring booksellers across the US doing inspiring and life changing work everyday, standing up for the kind of world they believe in. Meeting so many booksellers at the Authors Reception was exciting and I was thrilled to be able to tell them about the fictional bookshop in my book.

I also loved exploring this gorgeous city, being awed by its beautiful rivers and so many bridges. (I got to cross the Rachel Carson Bridge TWICE last Wednesday!). Pittsburgh is even more stunning than it is during the opening scenes of FLASHDANCE, which is saying something because that was a tremendous promise.

And best of all: Pittsburgh booksellers. I got to visit Posman Books, White Whale Books, and City Books, which is pretty good coverage for a single day in town. I loved each store so much and the suitcase I brought home was SO HEAVY.

The most surprising and wonderful thing about all of it, particularly for an event that was so massive, was how intimate and human it all was. From my cab driver from the airport, an immigrant from Cote D’Ivoire, who talked to me about how much he loved Pittsburgh, the bookseller from Kentucky I had dinner with whose colleague was someone I’d been chatting with on Substack, to the friends-of-friends who I met at the Authors Reception, and the bookseller I’d met that afternoon who popped into the reception to pick up a copy of my book—it was all so magical and affirming.

Best whirlwind ever. Thank you, Pittsburgh!

November 17, 2025

November Enthusiasms

New issue of my ENTHUSIASMS newsletter is out now, and it contains lots to be excited about, including two book giveaways. Check it out and enter for your chances to win here.

November 4, 2025

Wanting It All

It feels good to be part of a beautiful story, which was a chief appeal of jumping on the Blue Jays post-season bandwagon this year. The bandwagon has been an experience that echoed last year’s of Tay-ronto, when the Taylor Swift Eras tour arrived in our city and the vibes were so electric that one was even able to be a functional human being in spite of an American election outcome concurrently that was just devastating. Both of these collective experiences were so restorative for me, and when I’m called on to articulate why, the image comes to mind of boarded up windows across downtown Toronto in June of 2020 in the wake of the George Floyd protests after we’d just lived through a season of lockdown, the insult and injury of all that ugly plywood, and then eventual weekly “convoy” protests just blocks from my house that were loud, mean, and as antisocial as they were stupid. It’s been a hard five years, a hard ten years, and things are still hard, and scary, so much of what we feared at those election results last year having come to pass, and then some. And along the way I’d lost my faith and trust in community, and in any certainty I’d had about what our story was and just where we were going.

It’s been a long time since I’d dared to #WantitAll. Or even dared “to live for the hope of it all.” To provide some context, when I had a mental breakdown nearly four years ago, we’d known something was up when I was expressing secret desire “to just be put into a coma for a few months,” which I thought sounded perfectly reasonable at the time. As recently as last April, I was having conversations with my therapist about how I might manage to avoid the gutting disappointment of yet another electoral result that felt like somebody was stomping on my face, wondering if there was any way I could just cease feeling altogether—until I realized how ridiculous that sounded, and remembered the central tenet of therapy, which is that feeling things is unavoidable (I KNOW, SO UNFAIR).

And so spending the last month cheering for the Blue Jays has been kind of a wild experience, daring to hope, daring to want. Taking part in the collective joy in loving the team as well, as the wonderful example these players have set for what healthy masculinity is all about, including teamwork, and friendship. Sitting with the uncertainty of what baseball offers us—oh, those last few innings Saturday night were just agonizing, the worst. But also the best. So exciting.

As Gillian Deacon writes: I’m going to go so far as to call this wild ride of the Blue Jays’ post-season a love affair with the unknown. The stakes are a lot lower for the viewer in a ball game than in much of the rest of life, but it bears pointing out that the very thing that draws us to watch the World Series—or any other sporting match—is uncertainty. It’s the not-knowing that draws us in; it’s the possibility of what may or may not come that makes our hearts soar (and makes sports betting scandals so offensive). This exciting few weeks in Major League Baseball has been a great reminder that we have not just the skills for handling uncertainty, but an appetite for it.

And I’ve needed that reminder. I’ve spent the days since listening to “Didn’t We Almost Have It All,” by Whitney Houston (along with “Centre Field,” by John Fogerty), and relishing the line, “The ride we took was worth the fall, my friend.” Yes, I’m being dramatic, but it really was. And I’d forgotten that was even possible.

It feels really good (and hopeful) to remember.

October 28, 2025

Reading Habits

Saturday happiness is plenty of books coverage in my Toronto Star, and even happier happiness is my own book (WHAT??) mentioned in formidable company—along with 12 copies of the Bible and Archie comics!—as Ann Y.K. Choi shares her reading habits and celebrates the release of her new novel, ALL THINGS UNDER THE MOON. Thanks to Ann for saying lovely things about ASKING FOR A FRIEND and including it in your round-up. And if you know Ann, you’ll know that this kindness and generosity is most characteristic. I’m so looking forward to reading her book!

Read the whole piece here (gift link).

October 10, 2025

Sometimes Magic

A year ago today was a great day, because it was the day I met Suzy Krause when she came to town to do an event with Marissa Stapley at Type Books in the Junction. Suzy is a ridiculously talented author and downright radiant human who came all the way from Saskatchewan to promote her novel I Think We’ve Been Here Before, and I loved her immediately, and not JUST because she’s a blogger-turned-novelist just like I am and had had a copy of my debut novel on her shelf for years before we finally connected. And before the event, we all went out for dinner, along with the writer Sherri Vanderveen, and we talked about everything, including where I was at in my own career, with a novel on submission, no clue as to what was coming next, and I was trying to be more comfortable with having no expectations, with just living in the moment I was in.

That night after the event, as Suzy and I caught the subway east on the Bloor Danforth line, I FINALLY managed to catch the transit poster for Marissa’s then-new release, The Lightning Bottles, a book I love so much and which was kind of the novel Marissa has been working towards her whole career in terms of literary achievement. It was also exciting because I’ve dreamed of having a book on a transit ad, and having my friend’s book on a transit ad is the closest I’ve come. Because it never rains but it pours, we encountered the poster again on our way out of the station, and I think you can tell by the look on our faces just how excited and happy we were. And if all that weren’t magic enough, I received an email from my agent the next morning (while waiting for Suzy to come over for tea and scones—she was staying at a hotel was close to my house) that House of Anansi was going to make an offer on my book.

A year later, I am still trying to be more comfortable with having no expectations, just living in the moment I am in, which is easier to do in a world where I know good things happen sometimes. I just finished up the final pass for my new novel, now called DEFINITELY THRIVING. Marissa is reading it now from Los Angeles where she is busy at work on exciting things in preparation for the release of the Apple TV series based on her novel LUCKY. Suzy is reading it too from her home in Regina, where she’s spent the past year working on her own next book, and SUZY THINKS MY NOVEL IS GENUINELY FUNNY (Woot!).

The writing life is full of up and downs, and I’m realizing that there is actually no level of success that ensures an end to that. But in the meantime, there are magical people, friends to celebrate, and—in our own books, and real life—wonderful twists that can catch us unaware.

September 29, 2025

River Story

On the Queen Street bridge over the Don River in Toronto, there is inscribed the words, “this river I step in is not the river I stand in,” a phrase for which I had no frame of reference until yesterday when I dared to dip my feet in that river for the very first time. It was a moving experience, not least because of new reverence that’s resulted from the time I’ve spent this year reading river books (Theory of Water, by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson; Water Borne, by Dan Rubinstein; I think the book In Crisis, on Crisis, by James Cairns is also a river book; I still want to read Robert MacFarlane’s Is a River Alive?). But also because this river has been a vein through the body of my entire life, but I’ve never been able to get close to it. Growing up hearing stories about “The dirty Don,” catching glimpses from the subway as we cross the Danforth Viaduct, various journeys into the ravine with my kids to attempt to find it, but we never managed, and the nearest I could get was a view from the Riverdale Foot Bridge, which still wasn’t close enough.

But yesterday at Biidaasige Park, which opened in July, I finally got to meet the river properly, and to celebrate its return to wildness after more than a century of being hemmed in by concrete where it meets Lake Ontario, more than 20 years of planning resulting finally paying off. Pollinators were buzzing with bees and butterflies, and the trails were lined with people who were there, like we were, for the final of four processions of “A Lake Story” that took place over the weekend, an art event by Melissa McGill, commissioned and presented by The Bentway, and performed in collaboration with Jason Logan of the Toronto Ink Company. There couldn’t have been a more gorgeous day for such a spectacle, the sky a vivid blue that reflected in the water as hundreds of volunteers paddled canoes through the park and out into Lake Ontario, each vessel equipped with a flag dyed with different natural inks from Toronto’s waterfront, an array of beautiful hues that echoed and complemented the landscape.

It was a spectacular event, such a beautiful afternoon, made extra magic by the Blue Jays winning the American League East title at the Sky Dome while all this was going on. And I just felt so lucky to be a character in the story of this place, which “A Lake Story” had us thinking about so deeply. At a moment when declarations of “the world’s burning” are so ubiquitous that I don’t even hear them anymore, it seemed incredible to be paying attention to a different kind of narrative, to be here as a witness as the Don River is returned to life and to wildness. To remember what humanity is capable of when people work together and listen to wisdom of the natural world.

July 3, 2025

June

June was a whirlwind, a blur, an ice cream cone from a truck with rainbow sprinkles, a veritable bouquet of peony pouffs at various stages of open. It technically began in late May with my gorgeous eldest child’s sixteenth birthday, a coming of age of sorts, a celebration of the wonders of her, which only get more wondrous. Leading right into her younger sister’s karaoke birthday party, the best kid birthday party I’ve even thrown, by which I mean that I had the best time and was not even exhausted when it was over. Her actual birthday (twelve!) was five days later, and we had just as much fun celebrating her goodness, and still weren’t remotely tired of ice cream cake (good thing too). I’d had an elaborate bouquet of peonies delivered the weekend before, the greatest indulgence, and watching how the flowers changed marked the passing of the days. And there were the final book launches of a very busy literary season, welcoming wonderful works into the world. On a day in which some people assembled to watch a sad military parade in another country, I gathered under shady trees with my singing group and our families, a beautiful afternoon of singing (and pot luck) in High Park, singing songs of peace and love and freedom. We spent Father’s Day riding bikes on Toronto Island and partaking in our first swim of the year in lovely Lake Ontario—a perfect day. A few days after that, my husband and I celebrated twenty years of marriage, an incredible milestone, time gone by in a flash (save for the millions of different people we’ve been and lost through the years). As nauseating as it sounds, I love him more every single day (7300 and counting) and we go out of our ways to be kind to each other, to make life a little easier for each other, and I feel unfathomably lucky. The day after that, our youngest graduated from elementary school, and helping to organize the event was my final volunteer commitment at that school (which I only committed to because my husband joined me too), which meant we had to chaperone, which was bonkers, but also the event went so well and we were so proud of her. And by this point, my sister and her children had arrived for a visit, so we went straight from grad to their hotel downtown and swam in the rooftop pool in a furious wind. The next night, we all went to a baseball game together, the first time my kids had been, and it was Pride Night, and so much fun—my husband and kids had their makeup done, and the jumbo-tron was all same-sex couples kissing, and it was truly joyous and beautiful and I am glad we went, even if the Blue Jays were terrible. (I also realized that if, as I do, you frequent farmers’ markets, the prices on snacks at the Sky Dome seem really quite reasonable.) On Saturday, we rode our bikes to the see the Joyce Wieland Heart On exhibit at the AGO. By Monday, the heat wave was ON, but the city pools were open, so we had our first swim of the year at Christie Pits. The next day was my birthday, on which I lavished myself with all the pleasures—I spent the morning doing hot and cold plunges at Body Blitz while reading a waterproof book (!), and then I took myself out for a delicious lunch (while reading the new Laura Lippman), and then went to swim in my ordinary pool, and then that night we went back to Christie Pits, which meant I had THREE (3!) bathing suits hanging to dry by the end of the day, plus more ice cream cake. By the next day, the heat had broken, and I spent the afternoon on a patio with friends. The next day was a get-together with school families to celebrate our daughters’ graduation and the years they’ve been friends at school together. The next day was the last last day of school ever, which was really moving and a little bit hard, and then the day after that, we ran away to camp for three days in the wilderness, and the weather was perfect. And the day after that, June was over.

Something I succeeded at in June, and vow to take into my summer, is experiencing the goodness in the moment, being present. In years past, it has felt like posting/sharing my moments was as important as living them, which is an icky way to feel, not even just because I require other people to witness my milestones for them to seem valid and real, but also because it seemed like trying to hold onto something that was ephemeral, and maybe just letting the moments (days) go by is fine, because they’re going to anyway. I don’t have to hold them. And the other remarkable thing I was feeling was a real sense of calm and relaxation. I realize that so many of the times I’ve savoured over the last five years have felt like a reprieve from crisis (because so often they were), which is not the same as feeling GOOD (although it’s certainly BETTER!). And the crises in which we were operating left me with a real sense of scarcity—like that lake HAD to be swam in, because after that, who knew when I would swim again, which was definitely the case in 2020, and sometimes 2021, and I never quite lost that sense… But maybe I have? For now, at least.

There’s a less manic quality to my experience of summer. I do not need to be photographed leaping into pools. I can just leap into pools. And I do.

May 30, 2025

Babies

When I joined Singing Mamas in January, the fact that it was a group where women could bring their children was not the draw for me. I signed up in spite of this arrangement, really, having had it confirmed that plenty of people in the group would not be coming with kids. And I’ve got nothing against kids, I have even given birth to a couple of my own, and have spent more than my fair share of time in places that could double for the set of Romper Room, but these aren’t the spaces I am drawn to anymore.

Which makes it even more of surprise then, just how much spending time in the presence of babies has meant to me these last five months. These last few months as I’ve been working through a lot of things, living against a tense and unstable political backdrop, trying to make positive shifts to my ideas of community and connection, trying to be softer, more understanding. And perhaps the babies have pushed me in this direction more than anything else, helping me, teaching me. Each of them such a complete and funny little human in their own way, huge headed, gummy smiles, rolling over as a primary form of transportation. They eat, they poop, they cry, they laugh, they stare at the ceiling in wonder, and their regard in any manner (yesterday one of them tried to eat my shoe) feels like a gift.

And the more time I spend in the babies’ company, I realize what my fellow humans fundamentally are, all of us vulnerable creatures with big soft heads. That it’s funny how we all wear pants. That we are good, and we are worthy of love and care. And we have these weird amazing bodies that we’re not really in charge of, and that it’s a big deal to stand, and that everyone falls down sometimes, and there are so many fluids that it’s impossible contain. That we get hungry, and giddy, and sometimes we just have to sleep. That even being very serious is hilarious, especially if you have no hair.

They remind me of how much we need each other, and how much love there is to go around.

January 31, 2025

How I’m Taking Care

I used to spend so much time on the internet telling people what to do and how to be because it felt nice to believe that there was somehow a way to be immune to the struggles and foibles and terrible times that are (I’ve since realized) a pretty standard part of human experience, and also in lieu of feeling my feelings about how difficult and uncertain life can be.

This kind of didactic posturing was also the way that so many of us had been programmed to tell stories on online platforms anyway, and so that those stories were actually a manifestation of the very anxiety that these same platforms were continually fuelling in my addled brain would turn out to be somehow…awfully efficient? (LIFE HACK! HOW TO OPTIMIZE YOUR NEUROSES AND ALIENATE PEOPLE!)

So now I’ve become superstitious about dispensing any kind of advice, and the very idea of doing so makes me anxious. (What a knot this is!!)

But I’ve also been hearing from a lot of people who’ve been struggling lately, and I recognize where they are so much from where I was eight years ago, and where I would remain until I had a mental breakdown at the end of 2021. This would be my second experience of mental illness, after a bout of postpartum depression following the birth of my first child, which I didn’t recognize as depression at the time (even though everybody else did!).

In both situations, walking around perpetually weeping seemed (to me!) like a reasonable response to the difficulties/crises in the world around me at the time, both at large, and at small. “I don’t feel bad because there’s something wrong with me,” I insisted. “I feel bad because this is hard and things are terrible.” And while I wasn’t incorrect about the latter point, what I was missing was that the burden didn’t have to be so heavy. I wasn’t obligated to carry it all, and thinking that I had to had absolutely destroyed me.

Here is some of what helped me figure a lot of things out, and get me in a place of relative steadiness, where I’m so grateful to be right now.

1. THERAPY: Therapy has changed my life, and given me the tools to meet this moment.
2. SLEEP: My mental wellness is irrevocably connected to being well rested. When I am tired, everything is impossible and anxiety-inducing. And when I am anxious, sleep is really hard. What got me out of my crisis in 2021 was meds that calmed my brain and let me sleep, and ended my panic. (Also, don’t use your smartphone after 9pm or sooner than 30 minutes after you wake up in the morning)
3. LET GO OF THE VIGILANCE: But even before I’d hit my crisis point, I’d got a glimpse of where I was going so wrong when I read an Instagram post from the writer Katherine May, who has spent a lot of time interrogating the ideas that got treated as dogma in progressive online spaces. That her message came as such a revelation (and relief) seems strange now, but it really shifted my thinking. She’d written about how none of us were obliged to watch over the whole world. Yes, there was a part of it that we were all responsible for, those things close to home, but this sense of needing to keep vigilance over our huge and wondrous planet is an awful lot to ask of an ordinary person. You don’t have to do it. Breathe, and let it go.
4. MAKE FRIENDS WITH UNCERTAINTY: The vigilance had been important because it seemed like control. Turned out, I was not in control. (WHAT???) She’s a cliche, but reading Pema Chodran helped me find this less agonizing. As always, it’s a process.
5. FAREWELL TO SOCIAL MEDIA: I watched the first entire Trump presidency unfold on my Twitter feed, refreshing over and over, and it made me terrified, furious, and powerlessly beholden to an app which was absolutely manipulating my feelings and emotions. I’m so angry about that now. When he won again in November, I took Instagram off my phone, and while I still download it to use once or twice a week, I delete it immediately after. Because these apps are not worthy of my attention and my being, and they are sending a no more meaningful news update than a glance out my window does. In fact, that glance may be truer and more essential than any app I’ve ever refreshed. I do not need everyone else’s feelings and anxieties in my brain, voices which drown out my own thoughts, with so much fear and speculation. It’s a terrible way to read the world, and not a meaningful form of engagement.
6. REDISCOVER MY FOCUS: I am enjoying writing essays on Substack, and reading other people’s essays and blog posts in a variety of places, because all of this requires sustained focus, which is so much more satisfying and meaningful than the world in 280 characters. Same with reading actual books. (And hot tip, saying Farewell to Social Media frees up so much time for books!)
7. FIND THE NEWS IN PLACES THAT DON’T MAKE ME FEEL TERRIBLE: Another hot tip, if I paid no attention to the news at all, the world would keep turning and we’d all be fine. But I’m also interested in the world, so I follow the news, but I follow in a measured fashion, with an awareness that often “the news” is somebody telling me what to think, and fear, and feel. I used to wake up every morning with my clock radio alarm playing CBC World Report, until opening my eyes to a daily soundtrack of sadness and disaster became untenable, and now I wake up to whatever song they’re playing on Classical FM instead. I read the news on paper at the weekends. I (somewhat obsessively!) listen to political podcasts that contextualize what’s going on. I receive the Guardian Weekly magazine in my mailbox once a week. I read newspapers online, but sparingly. I DO NOT READ THE COMMENTS. I don’t read Reddit Threads. I have enough trouble with my own anxiety, so don’t need everybody else’s. I also remind myself that my experience of being in the world is as real and meaningful as whatever stories The News is telling me. So are the stories on a site like Fix the News. (Listen here to founder Angus Hervey’s interview with Matt Galloway on CBC’s The Current)
8. CONNECT WITH PEOPLE IN MEANINGFUL WAYS: Group chats. Get-togethers with friends. I’ve joined a singing group. I write my neighbourhood’s community newsletter. Participating in a fundraiser for my local food bank. Going to the movies. When people ask me to show up, I aspire to always say YES (unless I don’t want to).
9. MAKE PLANS FOR FUN THINGS: Booking campsites for summer. Purchasing theatre tickets (do you know about the Stratford Festival’s Bravo Zone?) I go swimming every day because it’s my favourite thing. Pencilling coffee dates into the calendar. Things to look forward to. At my lowest, I’ve had trouble believing in such thing as a future, and so mapping mine out can actually me a wild and subversive thing
10. DO WHAT YOU CAN: Pick a few places to put your money and time. (I am big on The Nature Conservancy of Canada, Action Canada, and The Toronto Public Library Foundation.) But remember again, you don’t have to hold it all.

(A song we sang yesterday at singing group)

June 21, 2024

What a Gathering!

Wednesday night was ✨✨MAGIC✨✨ Thank you to The Gather Society for making ASKING FOR A FRIEND part of your beautiful event at The Daughter Wine Bar that was all about nurturing women’s connections. I had the pleasure of saying a few words at the mic and mentioned all the connections that would be sparked during the evening, and also the fascinating hidden ways in which many of us were connected already—and during my book signing I got to discover a few of these, like Danielle from @thechefupstairs whose charity online cooking class was one of the highs of the pandemic lows for our family, and @stephstwist who it turns out is my neighbour and is opening her bakery just minutes from my house! (Plus my best friend of 30+ years was in attendance!) A whole bunch of brand new connections were fostered last night as well, and everyone went home with a copy of Jess and Clara’s story, which is all about the way events of a single evening can stitch two lives together. Erin, Emily and ESPECIALLY Kirsten @perfectlyimperfectsocial (who elevates to an art form being a human on the internet and whose support of my novel has been such a gift), once again, you made something extraordinary happen. I’m in awe, and so grateful.