About
I
Who?
Running away at 16 profoundly shaped my life. I slept on mattresses pulled from dumpsters as I hitchhiked my way around Canada. I pounced from job to job spanning the gamut from modeling designer fashions with a top agency to peeling out of them at the original Flashdance bar. I’ve been jailed and deported for working illegally and worked as a legal assistant for a lawyer where our clients ranged from Madams to bookies and even Mel Gibson on a DUI! I’ve slung beer in bars and fumbled full trays of food as the world’s lousiest waitress. Before the age of 30, I’d also taught piano, been a Nanny, a fibre artist, aerobics instructor, sold roses on street corners, conned people into signing up for credit cards they didn’t want and mastered the cerlox binding system at the copy shop. I got pregnant in a hit-and-run when I was 20 and son number two arrived eleven years later. My brief marriage to his father ended with broken ribs and a black eye, my ex-husband stating I’d wasted my youth. He was wrong. What I’d been doing was gaining life experience to write from an authentic place.
Where?
The first short story I ever submitted was published by Room and I thought, gee, this is easy. My second attempt landed in Western People shortly followed by another in Okanagan Life and a non -fiction on CBC radio.When the inevitable rejections began arriving, I stopped trying and stuck to writing magazine and newspaper articles. Mostly, I freelanced covering the arts and was given my own weekly column that ran for more than 10 years. With no child support from one father and the other refusing to pay what the court ordered, we couldn't afford the good ketchup until my photography and stained glass art started generating more income.
Now that the kids are grown, I've been able to write more and in the past few years, I’ve had short fiction published in Prism International, Riddle Fence, Reflex, Cliterature, The New Quarterly, Canadian Stories and Luna Station Quarterly as well as Best Canadian Stories 2025 and Sorry Not Sorry. My debut novel, The Art of Getting Lost and Found, is forthcoming with Breakwater Books in early 2026.
What’s Next?
In addition to The Art of Getting Lost and Found, I have just completed the third draft of my latest book, a literary fiction entitled Coached, about a young girl who wants to play hockey and a former NHL player who takes her under his wing.
Any Last Words?
I started university at age 28 but my son's father told me to quit and get a “real” job. Once the Kelowna Women's Shelter helped me to untangle our lives from this physically and emotionally abusive man, I started back to school, taking one course per semester. I graduated at the age of 50 from UBC Okanagan with a BA majoring in English/Creative Writing. Along the way, I got to hone my writing skills with Giller nominee Anne Fleming, John Lent (who hired me as his T.A.), Mary Ellen Holland and Nancy Holmes.
In 2018 I received honourable mention in TNQ’s Peter Hinchcliffe Short Story contest and in 2019 earned honourable mention in Event magazine's Let Your Hair Down speculative fiction contest. I've shortlisted numerous time and placed first runner up to Shelley Wood in the Okanagan Short Story contest and in 2023, won Prism International's Jacob Zilber Fiction prize.
As a photographer specializing in theatre and live events, I still shoot for Kelowna Actors Studio and the Kelowna Art Gallery but no longer retain a proper website. My old site can still be found here. Past clients have ranged from professional ballet and opera companies, the symphony and theatre to Cirque du Soleil. I’m also a stained glass artist, a yogi, a crazy avid knitter with a YouTube channel and a musician. I am the recipient of both the City of Kelowna’s Honour in the Arts as well as an Okanagan Arts Award