soft + out today. with thanks to Jackie Kaiser and Martha Kanya-Forstner who first brought this book to life. JK is warm sod. MKF is water and superpowered sun. i’m lucky for the team of: Jennifer Griffiths, Ashley Dunn, Emma Lockhart, Melanie Little, Rick Meier @knopfca Meg Wheeler @westwoodcreativeartists and the support of incredible independent bookshops. i’m also lucky that i have been accepted as a cat version of human. promotion is strange at the best of times. right now it feels … ? but i’m still here for books, the possible worth of words, and a simpler idea of sharing. less wares than wheres, as in this is where i’ve been. this book with its wider kinship questions is still alive in me, and, in whatever way, i hope it grows through and with you. 🌱
Older son, a newly minted Music and English teacher, is in a hurry to gather 20supply teaching hours before applying for positions and filled in this morning at my old high school. 🩵 He sent me pics.
It is so sweet to be reminded of NSS and three imaginative teachers who started me on the writing path. 🩵 Harold Lass (grade nine) introduced me to the world of Vonnegut and let us film K-tel commercials for our final assignment. I remember Alex Lee made a brilliant one for “Ice Nine” (Cat’s Cradle). 🩵 Anne Carrier (grade 11) was my portal to Sembene Ousmane, Chinua Achebe, Jorge Amado, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and encouraged me to write a comparative essay on Heart of Darkness, Apocalypse Now and On the Road. She had soaring expectations and built a beautiful container for learning where we were encouraged to read history and politics alongside literature. 🩵 Pam Keirstead (grade twelve) taught Writer’s Craft and stopped me ventriloquizing stories by Evelyn Waugh and helped me find a voice and sense of place and protagonism on the page. At one point she had me write a five page “credo”—essentially a list poem in the spirit of Joe Brainard with each line beginning “I believe”…as in: “here, kyo, find your declarative (paratactical) heart.”
I did a quick search and found these nice tributes to Lass, Carrier and Keirstead (RIP) from other former students.
If you had a high school teacher who sparked something in you at a pivotal moment, please write their name below. I’ll share the nest of names with our fledgling teacher 🪺
Swooning @graceyyz ✨ The third in our unintentional series. These books are my childhood COME TO LIFE. I don’t know if you know the magic of this! #cousins #senkohanabi 💙 💙 🌕
Repost• @graceyyz LITTLE FIREWORKS—releasing Summer 2027 ✨
The third book I’ve gotten to work on with @kyomaclear@annericakelley@rachaelcole forming a lovely Japan-set trilogy. A preview before its publication next year by @randomhousestudio 🏠
#picturebookillustration #picturebooks #illustration childrensbook
OUVRE LA PORTE, the French edition of A Door is to Open, is out today in Québec. Mostly, I want to celebrate the joy of publishing with La Pastèque, who have been my friends and publisher since my very first picture book FOURCHON (spork) with @isabelle_arsenault 🥄 I’m always inspired by their flair and humor and the small press care they take with their authors, illustrators and beautiful, inventive books. I’m thankful they see books as art, and are so ace at championing creators who are sometimes awkward at commerce. Here’s to our permission publishers and to all the creative door openers. Here’s to any of you, shyfolk, who write/draw/paint to reach and connect with strangers. To quote the great Remy Charlip: “A page is a door.” Open the doors. Merci @juliemorstad@jackie.kaiser.545@tarawalker19@adrienne.vdh.tang@johnmartz@fannybrittenpublic@westwoodcreativeartists@lapasteque@tundrabooks@idontlikemundays
p.s. Julie and I will be @librairiedrawnandquarterly in late May with @fannybritt@editionspasteque@tundrabooks Hope to see you. Toronto events tba
OUVRE LA PORTE, l’édition française de A Door is to Open, est disponible dès aujourd’hui. Je souhaite avant tout célébrer la joie de publier avec La Pastèque, qui est mon amie et éditrice depuis mon tout premier album jeunesse, FOURCHON (spork) avec @isabellearsenault 🌺 Leur talent, leur humour et l’attention qu’ils portent à leurs auteurs, illustrateurs et à leurs magnifiques livres inventifs sont une source d’inspiration constante. Je suis reconnaissante qu’ils considèrent les livres comme un art et qu’ils excellent à soutenir les créateurs parfois maladroits dans le monde du commerce. Bravo à nos éditeurs et à tous ceux qui ouvrent des portes à la créativité ! Bravo à vous tous qui écrivez, dessinez ou peignez pour toucher et créer des liens avec les autres. Pour reprendre les mots du grand Remy Charlip : « Une page est une porte. » Ouvrez les portes !
P.-S. : Julie et moi serons @librairiedrawnandquarterly fin mai avec @fannybrittenpublic@editionspasteque@tundrabooks Au plaisir de vous y voir ! Événements à Toronto à venir.
Colour bathing with @balintzsako who created one of my favourite (wordless) picture books of all time, Bunny & Tree, a sublime and surreal ‘buddy’ adventure @enchantedlion
BALINT ZSAKO | TANGO
7 March – 25 April 2026
@patelbrowngallery
Stephen Andrews Yesterday’s news, remembered today
March 27 - April 25, 2026
@paulpetrocanada
“Intuitively, I was drawn to ordering that chaos in the same way that my previous work had been trying to rationalize or grapple with grief - the work that I made in the eighties and nineties in response to the AIDS epidemic. That was a collective grief. The impulse I had after 9/11 was the same: to start ordering things. Searching the internet was a much more complicated process at that point in time.” —Stephen Andrews, 2018, Aftermath, McMichael Canadian Art Collection
“Like everyone, I have been both fascinated and horrified by the news coverage of the war in Iraq. In early 2003, I started searching the internet for photographic evidence of the war that was not being reported in the main-stream press. Web-based news sites offered a rather different picture. Photos of ‘collateral damage’ captured the obscenity of war in all its pornographic detail. In the wake of Abu Ghraib, these images are now ubiquitous. Like all pornographic and violent pictures, they tap into something instinctual, eliciting some gesture in response.
“Like my paintings, the drawings re-create the look of four-color repro-duction using a homemade separation technique. They are done as rubbings using window screening and crayons. The process softens the colors to a pastel palette, reminiscent of children’s book illustration. The contrast of the war imagery with the pastel color scheme brings to mind the moral tales of the Brothers Grimm. Gruesome lessons in a candy coating.”
@stephenandrewsartist
I went with my dad to Havana in the late 2000s, on the cusp of his 80th birthday and on the eve of the Cuban Revolution’s 50th anniversary. He was revisiting 1959–including his own CBC reporting—for a new documentary on Fidel Castro.
I joined a local film crew to conduct “streeters” (colour video—>.) A number of people spoke about the generational impact of the US trade embargo—shortages of life-saving drugs, incubators, anesthetics. I’m thinking of our visit as I follow the Nuestra América Convoy currently underway to deliver more than 20 tonnes of food, medicine, and solar equipment to Cuban communities hit by the US energy blockade and illegal siege, which has left millions without electricity. Inspired by the Global Sumud Flotilla, supplies are arriving by sea, charter flight, and several hundred suitcases coordinated by volunteers from three continents, all converging in Havana this weekend.
Find out more online
#NuestraAmericaConvoy
Nuestraamericaconvoy.org
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A family friend, Gita, shared these thoughts this morning: “to build a movement we need to bring different rivulets into the same space to make a large current. it’s time we do that because the war never stopped. it is the anti-war movement that stopped. …thinking out loud because my mind is focused on coalition building as an imperative now.”
#michaelmaclear
