photo by Ayelet Tsabari

I grew up in New Brunswick, a place some refer to as the drive-through province, in the city of Moncton, which was largely known as a railroad hub in the days of my youth. I go back to Moncton twice a year: in winter I drive through, and in summer I take the train through this province that is capable of holding many secrets in its backwoods.

For a short period I lived in Ottawa, then Toronto, then I moved Poland—one year near Gdansk, and two in Warsaw. Then I moved to England where I got my Masters in Studies in Fiction, met my husband, got a job at a community music organisation, started a magazine, and wrote a novel that didn’t see the light of day. And then it was time to leave Norwich, a move that saddened me but left me with a rich store of memories. In Illinois our beautiful daughter was born and the Iraq War started and we learned up close the complicated feelings people have towards war. The next year we moved to Canada, to Kitchener and have lived here since. I’ve been the editor of The New Quarterly since 2011, and the creative director of the Wild Writers Festival since later that year. I’ve had short fiction published in the UK and Canada, most recently in Polish(ed) an anthology of Polish Canadian writing. I began working on The Deserters sometime around 2010, though it had been percolating for a very long time.