All of my officially published pieces of journalism
Ottawa International Writers Festival’s growing rep lands it a prize catch The simple and powerful idea that fuels good writing is that language is more than the uncomplicated vehicle by which information is delivered. Words act in concordance with each other to actually shape meaning, to give it structure. Words are formative things. They don’t…
It’s finally time to see what the GCTC can do inside its new home It’s a simple thing to say: There is a magic to beginnings, an insistent tug of the spirit like a great inrushing of breath. It fills you to think about witnessing things growing, changing, evolving, and that the immediate present translates…
Latest issue of Arc Poetry Magazine resurrects the “forgotten and neglected” The unseen wisdom of the world tells us that life is sometimes awful. Man is always subject to the ultimate vicissitudes of death and decay; it is the single constant star in our often carefully navigated lives. We feel this most keenly when it…
Some of Decalogue 2’s authors break wood effortlessly, others use brute force I have no idea what good writing is. But in my limited experience, I usually liken it in a very particular way to martial arts. In the correlation of joints, sinews and mind there are a thousand different ways to throw a punch.…
Jesus in Montana Fringe is often an exercise in getting weird and outlandish fictional propositions to ring true. Of course, this exercise often fails. This play happily, magically and marvellously succeeds. Jesus in Montana is the successful culmination of an effort to transform an absolutely true and hugely entertaining story into a work of fiction.…
Rob McLennan and Nicholas Lea lead Ottawa’s literary rise As an amateur cynic, I always hesitate to trumpet things. So often they arc up like a rocket and plunge elliptically, falling below my expectations. This is almost certainly due to some immense and unforeseen flaw in my own makeup. My point: Whenever I witness something…