May 19, 2026
Immortality is Perhaps Unreasonable
I wrote this last Wednesday, and it appears in my latest ENTHUSIASMS newsletter. You can subscribe to ENTHUSIASMS here!
I’m writing this message on a train, somewhere between Belleville and Kingston, en-route to the first of two sold-out events this week which will cap off my spring of abundant book promotion (which started here). Which is the way I’m choosing to frame things, even though I’m relatively sure that my presence is not the reason why these events have proven popular, but I’m pleased to be hitched to success however I can manage it; one mustn’t quibble. And I’ve had a very good time this spring, almost all of my events well-attended (or well-enough), every one of them fun and inspiring, opportunities to connect, a good use of my time.
And I’ve been thinking a lot about publishing a book and what it means, and what we can expect expect from the experience, concluding that immortality is perhaps unreasonable. If it sounds like I’m being facetious, I’m not.
In his most recent book, Time Management for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman wrote about reading and rivers in a way that shifted so many things for me, about holding on, and letting go, about relinquishing control, and being free. And what he wrote was that we must think of our to-be-read piles as a river of reading rolling by that we can dip into, instead of a more imposing project that requires completion. There is no completion, there is no arrival. We’ll never do it all, and so accepting that—and that this singular moment in time is what actually matters, what you’re doing now instead of what you’ve done or what you still need to do—is to release the weight of the world from our shoulders.
I’ve been thinking about the books I’ve written in a similar way, accepting the transience of it all. Which came about when I was perusing my blog archives from 20 years ago and found reviews of books I loved and had thought deeply about at the time and which I can no longer remember having read or even knowing about at all. And accepting the same about my own books—that many people will never ever read them, and that even those who do and love them might not hold my books forever—is actually fine, and I don’t have to beat myself up for my books’ ephemerality, because all books are ephemeral (all THINGS are ephemeral), even the SERIOUS LITERARY BOOKS written by the pen of men, or the runaway bestsellers that years later turn up as boxes upon boxes at library book sales.
And maybe this is an easier fact to accept when it’s accompanied by a feeling that my novel has had a warm welcome into the world, that it’s found its way into the hands of readers through avenues outside my control, that I don’t necessarily need to orchestrate everything, that when I say I’m willing to let it go, I actually realize that this isn’t synonymous with “let it disappear.”
I used to celebrate my book birthdays. I used to bake a chocolate pie in honour of my first novel. And at a certain point this ritual stopped being meaningful to me, and I realized that it was me trying to cling to some intangible thing, and eventually I stopped clinging.
May 15, 2026
For the Love of Toronto
When I received the opportunity to be part of the For the Love of Toronto/Toronto Confessions event from the Museum of Toronto, I said yes without thinking. And then I did think, and panicked, and sent a note to Emma, my publicist at House of Anansi Press: “OMG, just checking, this is real, right? It occurs to me that if the AI scammers wanted to get to me, this would be the way to go!!” Because it does seem like it could be too good to be true: the chance to perform on an iconic stage for an up-and-coming cultural institution, to tell my story of this city where I’ve lived for half my life, to do so alongside eminent Torontonians, including event host, the nation’s BFF, Elamin Abdelmahmoud.
But Emma confirmed that the event was indeed legit, that she’d pitched me for it, and I couldn’t have imagined a more beautiful way to cap off this season of busy book promotion (for which Emma cannot receive enough credit for all she’s done).
I was also excited by the opportunity to try something that was new to me, totally outside my wheelhouse. To tell a story of this city in a seven minute presentation, create 15 slides, to recite the whole thing off my heart—but was my nearly half-century-old brain even capable of such feats? Could I tell a story remarkable enough to be worth people’s time, even though my experience of the city is a fairly pedestrian one (and not even in a cool flaneur way)? There were moments where I was preparing and feared I was out of my depth, that I would make a fool of myself, that this might be a story of triumph and adversity in which the latter came out on top.
But readers, I did it. Last night triumph was had. And yes, yesterday was perhaps the most iconic day of my entire life as I began it with a 7am swim in the art-deco pool at the Chateau Laurier in Ottawa and finished it on stage at The Second City in Toronto delivering my talk, “Holding It All: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” about learning to hold the city in all its fullness, seeing the holy in the humble, on how we have to persist in loving with this imperfect city because our frustration (underlined by anxiety about a city that’s changing all the time) can be too easily hijacked by people who want to profit from our fear and disunity.
The other speakers were wonderful, hilarious, inspiring, and it was an honour be among these others (iykyk). The audience was so warm and responsive. The Museum of Toronto is so fantastic.
And I am so so lucky.
April 10, 2026
Definitely Thriving is a Bestseller
On April 1, the day we arrived in England, I learned that Definitely Thriving had made the indie bestseller’s list for Canadian fiction for the week of March 21, certainly thanks to record sales via my events that week at Blue Heron Books and Take Cover Books, as well as to every other copy sold that week at a Canadian indie bookstore. I’ve made this list in the past, but it never felt as significant as it did this time, not least because I’d made peace with making no list at all the week my book came out, because it’s hard to get on any list these days unless your name is Rachel Reid, and also because I’ve figured out the trap of never-enoughness in publishing, and I’m just not playing that game. So I was overjoyed, and so pleased to be celebrating this milestone, and even doubly pleased to be celebrating the milestone while I was on vacation, so it didn’t even feel like this wonderful success was the best thing in my life. I’m so pleased with this little book that can, and grateful for the opportunities it’s bringing me as its author.
March 11, 2026
Scheduled Maintenance
Once again, as has been the case for the past three years in March, “my” pool has closed for a week of scheduled maintenance, and so my daily routine (do we call it a “rut” for short? Maybe we do?) has had to temporarily shift. As it’s the week following the clocks’ change to Daylight Savings Time, the shift has been extra, me waking before the sun and venturing out in the early morning amidst the cheer-cheer-cheers from wakey cardinals singing in the trees to ride the subway east and then walk south to the Wellesley Community Centre, a bright and modern swimming pool that’s free for everyone and whose cool water is such a refreshing change from where I usually swim. And I really love the shift so much, a window onto a different part of the day, a different part of the city, a new direction, a bit of flexibility that demonstrates just how much room there is to stretch and grow, room I don’t pay much attention to most of time. Because I like my routine very much—if this is a rut I will take it. But it’s just so easy to forget how much more there is, how different things can be, how invigorated I feel when I step out of my comfort zone, and so it’s useful to be reminded, and it makes me wonder how I might look for this kind of space in other part of my life.
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.
