Join us for an evening with four friends reading their latest and greatest! 🧾
Nonfiction geniuses Adèle Barclay, Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, Devon Murphy and Rose Zinnia will be reading and chatting, and we can’t wait to hear what they’ve been working on of late.
This event is free, but please RSVP through the link in our bio.
And join us for a friendly hangout after the reading!
#nonfictionreads #authorreading #granvilleisland #upstartandcrow
Next week marks 6 months since the emergency vet and then the oncologist told me Noya had 1-2 months to live. Our local vet suggested we try a drug that was unlikely to work, but no harm in trying. Indeed, no harm, only beauty and 6 unexpected months to tell her I love her and watch her and Esca become close. Last week, Noya’s breathing changed, and I saw a new scan that took my breath away. Our days all together are numbered. But late this morning, we were a crowded family of four on the bed, and I am grateful grateful grateful. ❤️
Introducing Esca! Short for Escargot. 🐌 A little more than a month ago, we brought her home, and the days since have been filled with cuddly shenanigans. (Also, she’s nearly tripled in size.) She’s playful, curious, absolutely fearless, loving, and a total baby 🦈, as is her puppy right. Some of you know that my beloved Noya was diagnosed with metastasized cancer in early October, at the age of 7, and given 1-2 months to live. I’m grateful every day that she’s still here and that while Esca’s arrival was at first an annoyance to her, it quickly became joyful inspiration— she plays, leapt over the coffee table the other day, looks always for Esca, and has appointed herself one of the grown-ups in family meetings. It’s the sweetest, dearest thing and I’m so glad she’s happy. Grateful, too, to @joyoftofu , whose reaction to the idea of bringing home a puppy days before my book was due and while I’m in immigration stuff and four days before we threw a big party was “of course.” Hooray for joyful chaos. Someday everyone will hold still long enough for a clear pic of all four of us. Welcome to the family, little snail. ❤️
Honored to be among this year’s @creative_capital awardees for #BothandNeither, which is forthcoming 2027 from @doubledaybooks@phoenix_bks@sonatineeditions . Memoir! Trans history! Ghosts! 👻 A book about what was erased and denied and how we are now culturally and personally haunted. Thank you for the support, @creative_capital ! It’s making some cool research happen. ❤️ And congratulations to the rest of the cohort! I am so excited to read your books and see your art. ❤️ And then, once more, for all the writers, some behind-the-scenes rejection talk: As with the @whitingfoundation grant last month, this year was my third time applying. Try, try again. ❤️❤️❤️
So grateful to the @whitingfoundation for this grant and honored to be alongside my fellow recipients, whose books I cannot wait to see in the world. Grateful, too, to be working with my brilliant @doubledaybooks editor @tgebremedhin , and my brilliant agent @pjmark.books , who has so beautifully supported this project (and me!) since we first talked about it on the porch at @breadloafwriter . I am extremely lucky.
To the @whitingfoundation : THANK YOU FOR FUNDING THIS EXTREMELY TRANS BOOK. ❤️
And because when you see the win you don’t see what’s behind it, let me share this for the writers: I’ve applied three times for this grant with this book. I definitely did not expect to get it this time! But facing down this year’s deadline made me finally figure out the structure for the book— and in the days after that deadline, things started snapping together. I’m at my desk this morning, barreling along on revisions, using this grant to fund pieces of missing research I need. There are months of work still ahead, but I’m so thankful for the support to do them. And my god I cannot WAIT for this book to finally meet you all. ❤️
Congratulations to Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, recipient of a 2025 Whiting Nonfiction Grant for Works-in-Progress for the book BOTH AND NEITHER! Read more about their work via the link in our bio.
5 1/2 summer weeks at @yaddotoday with this beautiful crew of brilliant weirdos and still more not pictured. Saw/heard so much art, both extant and in progress; ate so much delicious food (thanks, @tbrockmon and Taylor!); exhaled after finishing the book and furthered three (!) new projects. Ran 131 extremely warm miles. Slept in Katrina’s gorgeous room until the bats claimed it as their own. 🦇 Communed with the 👻 and the ghosts, too, of my past (12 years ago!) self. Thank you, Yaddo. Grateful for the chance to go back. Grateful for the glimpse of the (art, life) future. ❤️❤️ (Last shot: @joyoftofu bringing the Yaddo snacks to our home.)
In 2024, I ran 624.9 miles— and then face-planted on a run the morning of NYE, with 0.1 mile left on my goal. When I opened my eyes, I had a split eyebrow, a black eye, everyone’s faces were distorted and the world was blurred. The past 8 weeks have been slow ones of sleep, darkness, audiobooks, lots of bread baking to keep me off screens, physio and occupational therapy, friend visits, and tons of time cuddling with Noya. But this morning, finally, I wrote 461 words (my first of 2025!) and went for a short, slow run. I’m coming back. There’s a long way to go yet— my capacity is basically an hour— but I feel certain I’ll get there. Grateful to live in a country with universal health care, strong unions, and trans rights. Grateful to my friends and colleagues who’ve covered for me and my sweet partner Madde, who has taken care of me. I wish everyone had what they need. What a weird gift it is to have time and space to heal from this as the world darkens.
📆 Save the Date for the inaugural event of the Green College Leading Scholars "Truth & Imagination" series on Tuesday, November 26!
We're excited to have filmmaker and University of Victoria professor Chase Joynt join us for an exclusive screening of his award-winning film, Framing Agnes. Read more about the event through our link in bio.
This event is co-sponsored by the UBC School of Creative Writing and DocUBC.
#GreenCollegeUBC #TruthandImagination #NewSeries
What’s there to say about a conference when you get Covid a few days in and thus have to spend most of it quarantining in a hotel room? Only that it was somehow still AMAZING— thanks to the deeply thoughtful and generous @sewaneewriters crew, who had a mask policy and a plan in place for everything; my co-teacher @elenavox , who pivoted to hybrid with me and somehow always keeps everything fun; and the brilliant writers in my workshop, who brought themselves and their work to the space wholeheartedly. This place. These people. SWC is always magic, and it was again this year. Lucky to be part of it. 💫✒️❤️✨
