Between 1996 and 2010, I established myself as a professional, Northeastern Ontario poet. One milestone was the publication of my solo book Remembering Medusa Remembering in 2007. Another was having two poems appear alongside the works of Margaret Atwood, Lorna Crozier, and Erin Moure in Pith & Wry: Canadian Poetry (2010).
During this period, I also read at ten book launches: five in Sudbury, three in Timmins, and two in North Bay.
For my full publication history please click here.
In 2009, I began writing speculative fiction. Eventually I penned the first draft of a novella called Lockdown, somewhat akin to Stephen King’s Carrie. In it, the main character’s telekinetic powers are unleashed by a mass shooting at her school.
The next year, everything in my life changed. My mother began showing signs of dementia. In 2012, she suffered a stroke, and my father was diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer. I became their caregiver until their deaths in 2022. During that period, I also taught high school English, ran a wellness business and became a grandmother.
Although I continued to write and even drafted a novel about a space assassin who returns to Earth to join a group of eco-heroines destined to save the world, I was unable to bring it to completion or seek publication for any of the other works I produced throughout that time.
In the years since the passing of my parents, writing has become my sole focus. In 2023, I moved south from Timmins to Peterborough, Ontario. That summer, I took Tales from the Dark Side through the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies which inspired the idea for a new novel set thirty years after a zombie apocalypse. That fall, I joined The Book Incubator, a twelve-month novel writing program, to hone my skills as a novelist and write that manuscript.
From May 2024 to present, I’ve run an online accountability group for writers called The Joy of Writing with Monique Chénier. I’ve also revised the two novels mentioned above.
In the fall of 2025, I honed my non-fiction skills by taking the Journalism Essentials class through the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies; after all, I reasoned, some of the best novelists were journalists first. I was happy to have one of the articles I wrote that semester picked up by a local weekly newspaper.
That year, I also turned my attention to formally learning how to write creative nonfiction and took two classes focussed on that genre.
2026—The Year of Everything Coming Together
In many ways 2026 has been a turning point for me as a writer. I’ve returned to my poetry roots and had three poems accepted for publication in 2027. I will share them here, once they appear in Polar Borealis & Polar Starlight, two free online magazines devoted to Canadian speculative fiction. This year, I’ve also come to love the revision stage of the writing process as much as the drafting stage. And, I’m happy to say, I’ve begun submitting my short fiction for publication.
Perhaps the greatest gift this year has brought, however, is the inspiration for a new novel tentatively titled Tales of the Borough, the ‘positive future’ novel I’ve been trying to write since 2019.
Check out more on that topic, in My Writing Month in Review (September 2026) and the upcoming My Writing Month in Review (October 2026)
Thank you reading this overview of my writing history. If you have any thoughts or questions concerning it feel free to send me a message.
