My Words
My works in progress include…
Hope is a Necessary Delusion:
A Novel
What is it like for people who live with mental illness? What is it like to be “crazy” when others label evil acts “crazy”? What if we did lock up the mentally ill? Would we live in a more peaceful society?
Beginning in the August heat of 2019, the novel is told in eight parts: eight diverse perspectives on the disappearance of Ember Doyle, a chronically suicidal young woman with Bipolar Disorder, starting with Ember herself. The story includes the past, present, and future of the neurodiverse and neurotypical people impacted by her disappearance, including those who care for her, a witness, and the one who pulled the trigger.
The novel goes into each of the eight point-of-view character’s pasts — as well as their ancestor’s lives — to examine the intergenerational trauma that brought them to the mental illnesses they suffer with in the present. It also includes a speculative future in which the perpetual promise from some politicians to lock up the mentally ill to reduce crime is explored as my characters’ realities.
Hope is a Necessary Delusion is an intersectional contemporary novel, set primarily on Gabriola Island, BC, which asks its reader to examine their own beliefs about what it means to be neurotypical vs. neurodivergent in our world. It will leave readers with a new understanding of the role of “crazy” in our society.
When River Met Ocean:
A Children’s Picture Book
Sometimes, it’s lonely being different. River just wants to meet someone like him. His mom just wants to feel like she and her son are understood.
River is the kindergarten-aged protagonist of my story. He’s on “The Spectrum,” as he calls it, and is largely non-verbal. He describes himself, his family, and his life to the reader. Eventually he meets a kid named Ocean, who is just like him — and he and his mother don’t feel so alone anymore.
In 2024, I will be embarking on a six-month mentorship with the prolific Chelene Knight of Breathing Space Creative, to work on my novel-in-progress Hope is a Necessary Delusion.
You can also watch out for my work on The New Quarterly’s website: I will have blog posts on my writing space as well as my writing process for my hermit crab essay “Cantonese Lessons for a Foreign Daughter-in-Law” which they will publish in their print issue 169.
In 2023, my works were named finalists in two literary contests…
In January, my maybe-poem “On Wings” was longlisted for the Room Magazine 2022 Short Forms Contest. The piece juxtaposes the first and final births of my children.
In July, my hermit crab essay “Cantonese Lessons for a Foreign Daughter-in-Law” received an Honourable Mention in the 2023 Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest and will be published in issue 169 of The New Quarterly. The essay explores my relationship with my mother-in-law and her culture as I cared for her in her dying years.
Plus, I was selected by The FOLD’s Pitch Perfect: Kidlit edition to speak with agent Maria Vicente about my manuscript for my children’s picture book, When River Met Ocean.
In 2022, my works were finalists in three literary contests…
In July, my piece “Do I Tell Everyone…” was longlisted for the 2022 PRISM international Grouse Grind Lit Prize for V Short Forms. The piece is a maybe-poem asking when it is appropriate to tell everyone in your life that new life is on the way.
In August, my children’s picture book manuscript, “When River Met Ocean,” was longlisted for the CANSCAIP 2022 Writing for Children Competition. The manuscript follows a largely non-verbal autistic kindergartner and his mother as they navigate a lonely world.
In September, my hermit crab essay “Cantonese Lessons for a Foreign Daughter-in-Law” was shortlisted for The Fiddlehead’s 2022 Creative Nonfiction Contest.
Previous Publications.
“Fed is Best”
My flash essay “Fed is Best” about the pressures to breastfeed is included in Sustenance: Writers from BC and Beyond on the Subject of Food edited by Rachel Rose. Anvil Press, 2017.
“The Impermanence of Orchids”
My lyric essay “The Impermanence of Orchids” about living through miscarriage, caregiving, grief, and birth, is published in issue 39.4 of Prairie Fire magazine. Prairie Fire Press, 2018.
“Barricades Weep” (excerpt)
An excerpt from my essay “Barricades Weep” about clinical depression can be found in the 2018 anthology The Walls Between Us: Essays in Search of Truth edited by Beth Kephart. Juncture.
Death Doesn’t Discriminate:
A Prose Poem
I have seen death. The shadowland. Held her, hung out with her. Deep merlot, thin-limbed, fragile, persistent, painfully quiet and agonizingly still. I have watched my father inject pained animals to quiet their hearts. They slow, then stop. Ignorant, glassy, puppy dog eyes. People in far away worlds waste with distended bellies, paralyzed from hunger too long before mercy. Or cannot escape the ravaging rage of the machete blade. The smoke from burning human flesh in the air. I turn away from the media to survive. Grandparents died. The dearly departed, their horses freed. This was death. Then my daughter was born asleep. Carmine-coloured. One hundred seventy-four grams. Eighteen centimetres. Egg-shaped head appearing waxy to the touch. I could not touch her. Eyes closed. Tiny hands, fingers like red bent cocktail straws. The deep smell of iron and blood sits on my molars. They gave me her footprints. Cobalt because they misgendered her. It wasn’t carelessness but inexperience in sexing a body so underdeveloped. I birthed her. Quietly, effortlessly, painlessly. I weep over her wee body in my arms. Soft green diamond flannel blanket. Squint through tears to soak up the sight of her. Because I will never see her again. What age is her soul? I imagine her playing soccer with the other lost children. A swarm of bees chasing a flower in the wind. Her grandfather and my grandmother taking her, protecting her. Gone to a better place. Is there a better place? No. Existence just stops. There is no soul. All dogs do not go to heaven. The pocket watch just stops ticking.
My mother witnesses the blood-red baby body. My mother-in-law rushes to see me at home. She says I am strong as her son weeps in her arms. Three hundred seventy-five days later it is her body we sit with, texting arguments in the quiet. Parched, as if death has swallowed all liquid from her body. Frail. Auburn-skinned. Silent. Still. My exhausted eyes watch as her younger brother weeps over the body. Tiny movements cruelly trick the mind into believing what it wants to: hope. Lies. Cancer is hot pink and daffodil yellow. Cancer breaks the ribbon in the yellow jersey. Cancer cheats. Death’s way of coming faster. The media told me cancer is charity runs, cancer is strength. Lies. Hers was a marathon at a sprinter’s pace.
A sweet white rose appears taped to her door — an apparition. Dragonflies beat their quilted wings.
I could have a daughter turning two-years-old, with four grandparents attending her Elsa-themed party. I have a four-month-old son delighting only two grandparents in this world. He exists because they do not, the weight of boulders on his brand new shoulders. He is born into an era in which I am hardened against love. Let it go.
Two friends our own age swept off this earth in the two years since my daughter died. Death takes. Sinners and saints. Life is hard for death to defeat, my orphaned husband insists. I don’t understand how he can believe this after closing the eyes of the woman who cradled him in her womb. My own mother has bought a colt to carry her cantering away from death. Deny. All it takes is for a muscle to stop contracting on cue, cells to gather, mutated or not, and travel to the brain, fluid to enter the lungs: a million other potential tiny, insignificant events to end it all. Rosewood bodies inside rosewood coffins.
Ashes all.
Upcoming Publications…
My hermit crab essay “Cantonese Lessons for a Foreign Daughter-in-Law” will be published in issue 169 of The New Quarterly as an Honourable Mention in the 2023 Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest.