Let’s start with the good news. My book officially has a webpage with University of Alberta Press! Isn’t the cover fabulous? Hopefully they’ll add a pre-order link sometime soon – something I need to ask them about. Please share with your friends and networks to get the word out! — In bad news, it’s happened...

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I’m cheating in my photo blog this month by posting pictures of the books I’ve been reading. Most of them I’ve enjoyed, though one I haven’t started yet. I picked eight books and one magazine (Orion), because the magazine is as hefty as a novella. Let me know which books you’ve enjoyed recently! I came...

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Because of my illness, I often have to rest, but I don’t want to lie down and sleep. I just need to give my brain a breather from concentrating on recipes, housework, or gardening. It’s at times like these that I turn to the internet. We all know the refrain that scrolling (or doomscrolling) is...

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Emmett Rensin is mad, and he’d be the first to tell you so. In THE COMPLICATIONS: ON GOING INSANE IN AMERICA, he writes about his life with schizoaffective disorder of the bipolar type. He’s been in and out of hospital, alienated many of his friends, but is considered ‘high-functioning’ because he can write. He started...

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For those of you who are new here, I’ve written a book about my time as a field scientist and writer in remote locations around the Arctic and western Canada, and my journey to become an academic. That journey was marred by the challenges facing women in academia, and cut short by a devastating mental...

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Well it’s nine days until the summer solstice so I thought I’d take a look around the garden and see what’s flourishing in this relatively cool and wet spring we’ve had. First off the grand fir, which is the happiest I’ve seen it in years. So much fresh growth! And into June, too. Usually it...

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“Good poems are the best teachers. Perhaps they are the only teachers. I would go so far as to say that, if one must make a choice between reading or taking a part in a workshop, one should read.” –Mary Oliver I read a lot. Not just a bit, but a lot. I get a...

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Misty Pratt’s ALL IN HER HEAD is a well-written, wide-ranging book that explores the issues women face in the medical system. Pratt focuses specifically on the propensity to diagnose mental illness and prescribe medication more often in women than in men, even when women may have physical symptoms that suggest something other than mental illness....

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Last month I went for a haircut and, as I pulled off my sweater so it wouldn’t catch stray hairs, the hairdresser asked “why are you so tanned?” I was a bit taken aback, but a glance in the mirror showed that my arms and hands are nut brown, and my face close to that....

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Home is: Wherever my husband and dog are. The silhouette of Hilda Peak from the trailhead along the Icefields Parkway, tiny Hilda Glacier plastered up against the back wall of the cirque. The bowl of Boundary Lake, at the border of Banff and Jasper National Parks, and the joy of swimming it brought our retrievers....

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