*Pushcart Prize Nomination

Land Matters ~ insideWaterloo, Climate Justice issue, August 2022

Birdland ~ Being Home: An Essay Anthology (Madville Press, 2021)

Roadways ~ The New Quarterly, Issue 159, Summer 2021

*Baked Clay ~ The Common: A Modern Sense of Place, Issue 18

Slave Days in the Queen’s Bush ~ Hamilton Arts & Letters, Issue 13.1

*Ten Crossings in the Midwestern Borderlands ~ Slag Glass City

From the Banks of the Grand ~ The New Quarterly

The Fake MFA Syllabus ~ Creative Nonfiction, Issue 72 (PDF scan)

Last Chance ~ Burningword Literary Journal, No. 96

Dental Therapy ~ The Rappahannock Review, Issue 7.2 (plus: interview)

Citizen Mussels ~ Utne Reader (originally published in Boulevard, Vol. 34)

Burning Silence ~ The Drum: A Literary Magazine for Your Ears, Issue 75

Waterlines ~ Anthology of Forests, Ilyali Press, 2019 (excerpted essay)

Bestiary ~ The Citron Review

Somehow, Potatoes ~ The Olive Press

Walking on Water ~ Psaltery & Lyre

Pierre Berton & the Economics of Authenticity ~ Canadian Literature

The Homeground Essays

I am currently at work on a book manuscript composed of previously published and newly written essays that explore the idea of home, belonging, and place-making. Set primarily in Southwestern Ontario, the collection loosely follows my geographic migrations over the past decade—from the countryside north of Kitchener-Waterloo to Chicago, Western Massachusetts, San Francisco, and back home to Kitchener. Braided with cultural and literary critique, archival research, and personal reflection, these lyric essays explore interrelated, but often overlooked, ecological, spiritual, and social histories. Toggling between local and continental scales, different pieces explore the double edge of faith and doubt, the overlap of immigration and environmental crises, and the histories and counter-histories of settlement and land theft. Together, The Homeground Essays seek after James Baldwin’s exhortation to “know whence you came.”

I gratefully acknowledge financial support in 2023 for this project from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council (via Recommender Grants from House of Anansi Press, The New Quarterly, and Hamilton Arts & Letters), and the Region of Waterloo Arts Fund (via the Good Foundation Inc.)