my work

  • “Of Two Worlds,” in the anthology, Other Tongues: Mixed Race Women Speak Out. Find it here

    “I learned another word yesterday,” I announced. “While I was waiting outside the house with Daddy for Sammy to come home from school, some of his classmates were staring at me. They giggled and whispered then, after they’d passed, one turned and called, ‘Obruni, obruni.’ Daddy explained that they were calling me a white person.”

  • “Meetings,” in the anthology, Somebody’s Child: Stories About Adoption. Find it here

Crossing the road with the throng of others making their way to the station and going about their daily business, I saw her. Everyone else passed through my radar, rejected. Only she remained. Red coat. Check. White T-shirt. Check. Jeans. Check. Perhaps the way she stood or carried her body left no doubt in my mind that I was looking at my sister for the first time. She saw me almost immediately and came toward me as I reached the safety of the sidewalk. We stood there, our mouths mirroring smiles, her eyes dancing.

  • “Progress Report,” in the anthology, Black Writers Matter. Find it here

    Everyone should experience the horizontal snow of prairie blizzards powered by winds so strong that you wonder whether the car will be caught up in a vortex and dropped in a farmer’s field miles away. We moved on from Regina after the blizzard had left tractor trailers lying in the ditch like stranded turtles. I was in awe of Mother Nature then and again when the mirage suspended above the horizon morphed into the Rocky Mountains. It seemed an age before they swallowed us up.

  • “Obruni,” in the online journal, The James Franco Review. Find it here

    We stand beside each other, an elderly, black man and a middle-aged woman, watching children in ochre yellow shirts, their wiry hair so short that only the knee length shorts, tunic dresses and occasional flashes of gold on ear lobes distinguish gender. They pour from the confines of long, low buildings and onto the narrow road between the school and Daddy’s home. Usually he stands alone, slight frame erect, smooth black arms hanging loosely, waiting for Samuel, the boy who lives at the house during school term. For days, I join my first father, recently found, who insists on being called Daddy. 

  • “Summer of the Bears,” in the online journal, Panorama: The Journal of Intelligent Travel. Find it here

    The caffeine was unnecessary now, the mug an impediment, taking up a hand that was needed to reach for the bear spray in my pack’s side-pocket. As I reached for the canister, I remembered that it was still in my other pack in the van. I faced a bear with a stainless-steel coffee cup, a heavy Nikon camera, spare clothing, snacks, matches, water bottle, my passport, wallet, and my dog.

    The three of us were arrested in motion, the bear and I watching each other, the dog’s eyes on me, as if questioning why I abruptly interrupted the hike.

  • “On Severance and Connection,” winner of subTerrain Magazine’s 2019 Lush Triumphant Literary Award in creative non-fiction category. Find it in Issue #84.

    After he left, she bought a Stihl chainsaw. Money well spent, it was far superior to the Homelite he’d traded for the lawnmower. Like going from a tricycle to a Harley Davidson. The throaty, chugging roar subdued by earplugs moderated the wild swings in the adjustment to being single again. She’d return to the house showered in sawn confetti trailing the spices of pine and spruce.

  • “On Playing Double Jeopardy!” Winner of The Malahat Review’s 2020 Constance Rooke Creative Nonfiction Prize. Find it in Issue #213.

  • “Moon in Fragments,” winner of The Writer’s Union of Canada 2022 Short Prose Competition.

  • “On the Trail of Opportunity,” in The Fiddlehead’s Summer 2022 Creative Nonfiction Issue, No. 292. The inevitable fall comes on a flat section. I land heavy on my side, in a puddle. I am on my feet again in seconds, checking my grazed hands and sore hip. Sally, at least a hundred vertical feet above, is focused on the next boulder and the route. Lena looks back. “I’m okay,” I yell. The dog watches me, her doe-like eyes fringed with white eyelashes, blinking when the occasional large snowflake alights on them.