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Short story published in Channel (Ireland)

During an open water diving exam north of Quebec City, a young woman recalls a repressed trauma while connecting with nature.

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I haven’t been sleeping a lot since I drowned. I realize I’ve spoken aloud, and look at the other passengers in front of me on the bus, wondering if anyone heard me, but they’re all staring ahead, their toques and parka hoods bouncing simultaneously, as if attached to invisible strings.

Short fiction published in The New Quarterly (Canada)

While cross-country skiing, Kait Elliot realizes how contained her life is, but her past is pulling at her, forcing her to remember that she could be someone very different.

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If Kait squints just the right way, allowing the edges of the creek near her Ottawa home to blur, she can imagine she’s eighteen again, skiing with Piotr at the Pinery two decades ago. She’s sheltered here in the forest, not like the day she and Piotr left the trail and skied onto Lake Huron, the wind sharp as it rushed their bodies. She takes a thermos of hot chocolate from her knapsack and pours herself a cup, trying to remember the way the day felt, how it wrapped its brilliance around her and Piotr, like gauze made of sugar, binding them together.

Short story published in Transition (Canada)

Still scarred from how her mind and body reacted to the birth of her first child, Olivia Cole again finds herself dealing with depression, her life minimized to her house, her children, her increasingly distant husband, her career and artistic endeavours shelved, until the day the birds start flying into glass.

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Raucous birdcalls shatter Olivia’s sleep like bodies slamming into glass and she bolts awake, groping at the air and her thoughts for something intangibly lost. Then she remembers. Her stomach clenches with guilt, harbouring relief that it was Marlyn’s daughter who was hit by a car three days ago, and not one of her own children.

In the morning half-light the room seems submerged, aqueous, and for a moment Olivia imagines unstitching the fabric of routine, floating away. For once she would like to stay in bed, sleep soundly without dreams, awaken without a sense of drowning.

She hasn’t been to the hospital, yet. Can’t walk through the corridors with their heady musk of blood and gauze, recycled air and latex. Doesn’t want to think about Marlyn sitting next to Jill, scanning the machines for signs of life. Hospitals are where lives start to fall apart.

Short story published in Transition (Canada)

A hospitalized teenager struggles with her self-worth and identity as her family structure changes.

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When the shapes start to disappear, then the colours, I focus on the greyness that lives inside people, trapped like pencil smudges inside the lines that confine them. I see how they used to be—what they might yet become. Stripped of fabric, flesh, of bone—all that remains is the pulse of viscous light. Malleable. Amorphous. Shadowed.

Short story published in Maple Tree Literary Supplement

Honeymooning in Bermuda, Lexi finds herself diving into memories that she has buried along with her identity, as she explores the historical site of Dockyard with its layered past.

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Dockyard Port comes into view from the ferry, like a jagged stone scar against blue sky, bluer water. Lexi looks over her shoulder to see if her husband has noticed, but he’s facing the other way, watching the scattered groups of people on the upper deck with them. Probably planning his next marketing paper, Lexi thinks, turning to view the land. He’ll spend hours at the tourist enclaves, chatting up shop owners, observing consumer likes and dislikes, leaving Lexi free to explore the former British naval base, swim with the dolphins.

Short story published in Gray’s Sporting Journal (USA)

Jill Emery’s first experience snow goose hunting is not what she expected when her soon-to-be step-father asked her to go on a trip with her for her thirteenth birthday (she had been expecting Disneyworld), but it is a coming-of-age experience that will change her in ways she could never have imagined.

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You know what I hate most about goose hunting? The cold. When I’m skating or tobogganing, I’m moving, staying warm, but with hunting you have to pretend you aren’t there. Which means being still.

It’s late March, but we’re in northern Saskatchewan so spring is still a long way off. I’m stretched out on my back in a field of snow-covered rice paddies, next to Anderson, the man who’ll be marrying my mother sometime this summer. We’re with Ian Elliot, our guide, and five other men. I’m wearing layers and layers of clothes, so many I can barely move without squeaking, yet the cold has breathed into the warmth that should be my skin. If I stay here much longer, I’ll sink into this frozen marsh then disintegrate, leaving no mark at all.

Short story produced for CBC Radio (Canada)

At 62, Ella Elliot finds herself trapped in an abusive relationship, one that has left her feeling powerless, but something is about to change.

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Her hair is short, too short for the shape of her face, and it crackles as she brushes it, catching the static in the air, like sparks from faulty wiring. She licks the ends of her fingers, smooths down the reddish-grey strands drawn skyward towards the approaching storm.

Short story published in Maple Tree Literary Supplement

Shortly after tree planting season in northern Ontario, Ian Elliot joins Chalice Lakefield at her ocean-side cottage in humid Naples, Florida where past traumas and secrets are revealed.

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This morning: Saskatchewan; this evening: Florida. I’m a little disoriented, as if I’ve just folded a map, linking two distant places so improbably, so quickly together. I hadn’t planned on seeing Chalice again, so soon after planting season, but she’d called me yesterday, asked if I’d come and see her. Didn’t say why and I didn’t ask.

Short story published in The Wascana Review (Canada)

Placed 1st in a Saskatchewan Writers Guild Short Fiction Contest

During a white-watering rafting accident on the Nenana River in Alaska, Cadence Elliot finds herself reliving the events that brought her to this moment where her twin brother’s life is at stake, and their mother Kait has voluntarily disappeared from their lives.

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Today the river took Finn. That’s what our guide said when my brother was swept out of the raft. The river took him. What the river takes, the river keeps. Dad yelled at him to shut up and get his son back, but Finn had disappeared.

We were all tired, and maybe careless. We had to get up at two yesterday morning to drive to Denali National Park from Anchorage. Finn and I slept in the car, but I kept jerking awake, thinking Dad would fall asleep, too. The construction on the highway slowed us down, but Dad said he’d accounted for it, so we’d still arrive in Denali by eight-thirty, and sure enough, we drove up to the park just in time for our six-hour bus tour that turned into seven because of the grizzlies.

Poem published in The Fieldstone Review (Canada)

Poem published in Fast Forward: New Saskatchewan Poets (Canada)

Poem published in The Wascana Review (Canada)