Any writer will recognize the thrill of knowing your publisher really believes in you. So it’s with real pleasure that I saw this from Turnstone Press on the News page of their website here. And on Instagram and Facebook!

Black Umbrella, the newest collection of my poetry, will be published by Turnstone Press of Winnipeg in 2022. And 2021 marks Turnstone Press's 45th year of publishing. As part of their celebrations, they’re running a year-long poetry series: 2poem2 Tuesday, hosted on YouTube. Reading online with Lorri Neilsen Glenn, the Canadian author and editor of fourteen books of poetry, essays and scholarly work, I’m delighted to be part of it.

You can find Lorri Neilsen Glenn and me here.

Last year at this time I literally received a wakeup call. I wrote about the experience and titled the prose piece “On the Line.” I’m pleased to say that it will appear in the upcoming anthology, Apart: a year of pandemic poetry and prose.

Saskatchewan, where I live, is a small province, with a relatively small population. But there’s nothing small about its writing community or the support available to writers at all stages of their careers. The Saskatchewan Writers Guild is one of many organizations here that has a long history of providing programs to help writers grow and keep going. One of these is the SWG Mentorship Program, which allows developing writers (the apprentices) to work in a supportive environment under the guidance of professional writers (the mentors).

Grit, sheer stubbornness, and an enormous heart. That’s my takeaway after working with Sue Goyette, an award-winning poet currently based in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

I’m not sure what makes me happier, seeing one of my prose poems in the current issue of Grain or my good pal Betsy Rosenwald’s art on the cover.

The CBC Poetry Prize is one of Canada’s most prestigious awards for the form. Judged by eminent Canadian writers, CBC Literary Awards have been motivating and encouraging the careers of writers in this country since 1979.

So it was a happy day when I received word from CBC that my poem, “All My Questions Kneel Down,” had landed on the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize longlist. I shared the honour with 31 fine poets. Our work was selected from a pool of over 3,000 entries.

My young adult novel-in-verse, Stay, intrigued voiceEd interviewer Stephen Hurley as both a teacher and a parent. He invited me to chat with him about the book.