My Story

I’m a writer. My work is inspired by fairy tales, mythology and nature.

I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was a child when I discovered that there were people called writers who wrote the books I loved to read.

I started writing seriously as a teenager and my first story, an article about a family sailing trip, was published when I was 16 years old. This was followed by a poem in an international children’s magazine. Later, I published another poem in a Canadian teen magazine and got an opinion piece published in the local newspaper (even though the paper adamantly refused to publish student writers or offer meaningful internships.)

But I was told repeatedly by my family that I couldn’t make a living as a writer and that I needed to find something more practical to do. On leaving school, I moved to Toronto and got a job as an accounting clerk. I hated the monotony of the work. I quit after two years to pursue an accounting degree at university, thinking being a chartered accountant would be more interesting. It only took one year of accounting courses to dissuade me of that idea. I still believed I needed to do something “practical” to make a living, so I earned a degree in political science, thinking I would go to law school. In my last year of university, I realized that I really didn’t want to be a lawyer. At the last minute, I applied and got into journalism school. It was a practical way to write and earn a living.

Journalism school was a huge disappointment. I discovered that my instructors didn’t really care about great writing, making snarky comments about “wanna-be Hemingways.” I also learned that it was just about impossible to break into the industry without doing unpaid internships. I just couldn’t afford to do that.

Instead, I’ve pursued a career in communications. Over the last 20 years, I have written everything from annual reports to web copy for non-profit organizations and government agencies.

My love of creative writing has never really left me. Over the years, I’ve studied creative writing at the Humber School for Writers Summer Workshop and at the University of Toronto Continuing Studies. My travel essay, The Deepest Blue, won third place at the Book Passage Travel Writing and Photography Conference in 2017.

Today, I share personal essays on Substack and am currently working on a novel and a collection of short stories.