(Note: Erin is a friend so my review may not be entirely unbiased) Erin Zimmerman completed a PhD at the Université de Montréal in evolutionary biology. She followed this up with a postdoctoral position at the university’s biodiversity institute. She is now a science writer, and has been published in Narratively, Undark, the LA Review...

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The last two days we’ve been living in a cacophony of shingle scraping, nail guns firing, and a dropped skylight (whoops) as we’re getting a new roof put on. The noise isn’t exactly the best for contemplative writing. But I’ll do my best, as I have an interesting idea to share here. I’ve heard people...

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When I was first diagnosed with my illness, I got into photography. I felt a sense of calm descend on me when I took photos. I liked the way you could look through the lens and see something completely different than when you looked at the whole scene. I enjoyed capturing normal things in random...

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Most book authors can’t rely on their writing to support themselves and instead work full-time jobs and write on the side (unless they’re Barbara Kingsolver or Kathy Reichs). We are thus exhorted to write whenever we can: early in the morning, before our family is up. At the pool, while our children take swimming lessons....

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Jessica J. Lee is the author of Turning, a book that chronicles a year of wild swimming in lakes and streams around Berlin, even in the middle of winter when she has to bring a hammer to break the ice. Her second book, Two Trees Make a Forest, unearths the history of her maternal grandparents...

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The last few weeks I’ve been walking at the Cowichan estuary, where I haven’t been in almost a year. Last time we had Silah with us, and she went ballistic on a dog that startled her by appearing around the bend in a bushy part of the trail. We decided that narrow trails with short...

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Happy Valentine’s Day! One of the things the peer reviewers said about my book was that they wanted to see some pictures of the places and events I describe. So I’ve spent the last two weeks going through old photos (slides and prints – yes, that old!) and trying to select the ones that best...

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Last week I went to the labyrinth again. In case you’re wondering whether or not there’s a limit on the benefits of labyrinthing, there isn’t. This was my best visit yet—I was fully immersed in the walking pattern and was able to think a lot about my health, my book, and what I want to...

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[Full disclosure: Frances is a friend and one of my writing accountability buddies.] Frances Peck’s first novel, The Broken Places, explored the interactions between an unlikely group of people inadvertently thrown together when an earthquake shook Vancouver’s North Shore. Peck builds characters that jump off the page, and you root for them even if you...

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Yesterday I signed a contract with University of Alberta Press to publish my science memoir, Meltdown: The Making and Breaking of a Field Scientist. It’s scheduled to come out in spring of 2025. It’s been a long five-year journey, from writing and rewriting to writing again. In early 2019, while on a bipolar high, I...

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