About

Born and raised in Montreal, with a strong sense of blue-collar values, I have also lived in Tokyo and Victoria.  I earned a Humanities Diploma and BFA in nonfiction writing (both from UVic night classes) while working for 25 years as a systems analyst. As a celebration of turning 65, I completed an MFA from UKings School of Journalism (Dalhousie). For fun along the way, I also studied Peace Research and Norwegian Literature at the U of Oslo; and Japanese language at Takushoku U in Tokyo. I am a twelve-year member of the Writer’s Union of Canada (TWUC) and the author of Ted Grant: Sixty Years of Legendary Photojournalism (Heritage House 2013) – a book I wrote to honour a hard-working Canadian artist.

As a freelance writer, I have been widely published in newspapers and magazines; among them The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Montreal Gazette, Reader’s Digest, CBC.ca, THIS magazine, the Blind Canadian and the Tyee. I won two public service awards for innovative leadership in helping to create a piece of Boal theatre for a deaf audience, and for developing and moderating a cultural competency panel of social workers; and a national award for volunteer work with hospice.  

My partner Daryl and I enjoy reading and writing and living on Vancouver Island in Canada. We have enjoyed a decade of volunteering with The Canadian Federation of the Blind (CFB). Listening to Blind Canadians, a short video we produced as part of our volunteer work, is an interview I conducted with CFB friends. We made the seven-minute clip as a sizzle reel (promotional tool) to help find funding and a producer interested in making a larger documentary of the same name. No luck yet!

Some of my 2023 Stats

Twitter/ Facebook / Instagram:      

Followers: 0 / Following: 0
                                                         

Page Time:                                         

Books Read: 60 

Dear Website Guest,

Unlike 83.72%* of the world population who own smartphones, I never have. Everyone keeps saying you can’t be a writer without participating in popular social media platforms, but I guess I have a thick skull. Friends who sleep with their phones, shake their heads as if I were the old lady living in an Instagram-less shoe. Maybe they are right. But the more I read about social media addictions, the more I wonder: why get a smartphone, when landline & email work for me – and allow time for my reading and writing addictions? Many friends, once avid readers, tell me they are no longer able to read substantial books. Something has happened to their ability to focus after years of scrolling their phones. Seems a terrible loss; and yet they keep scrolling. Addictions, of any kind, are horrible thieves in our lives and often hard for any of us to acknowledge. 

I may be part of the dwindling 16% of humans on the planet who do not have a smartphone, but in lieu of screen-time, I have enjoyed page-time. The 60 books listed below were good reads this year, but the nine bolded titles rocked my world! I may not have a phone, but at least I have a website that acts as a portfolio of my freelance work. Thank you for your time in visiting! I appreciate it. 

Thelma

PS: Here is a list of the books I enjoyed in 2023 – in order of being read:            

1. Long Shadows: Truth, Lies and History by Erna Paris
2. The Night of the Gun: A reporter investigates the darkest story of his life by David Carr            
3. Negotiating a Book Contract: A Guide for Authors, Agents and Lawyers by Mark Levine 
4. Unravelling Canada: A Knitting Odyssey by Sylvia Olsen                       
5. An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong
6. Entangled Life: how fungi make our worlds by Merlyn Sheldrake
7. This is Your Mind on Plants by Michael Pollan 
8. Fen, Bog, Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Destruction by Annie Proulx 
9. The Hidden Kingdom of Fungi by Keith Seifert and Rob Dr. Dunn 
10. Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why it Matters, and How to Harness it by Ethan Kross 
11. Sell your book: an Author’s Guide to Publicity and Promotion by Suzanne Alyssa Andrew           
12. Immune: A Journey into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive by Philipp Dettmer
13. Empathy: Turning Compassion into Action by David Johnston
14. Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton 
15. Sleepers and Ties by Gayle Kirkpatrick (FICTION)
16. 101 Best Beginnings Ever Written: A Romp Through Literary Openings by Barnaby Conrad 
17. Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift (FICTION)  
18. Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking by Sarah Bakewell 
19. Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor
20. Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea by Sebastian Junger
21. The Fourth Genre: Creative Nonfiction by Robert Root Jr. and Michael Steinberg
22. Forward, Shakespeare! by Jean Little (FICTION)
23. The Complete Essays by Michel de Montaigne
24. The Embodied Violinist by Gwen Thompson-Robinow 
25. Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner 
26. The Blind Mechanic: survivor of the 1917 Halifax explosion by Marilyn Davidson Elliott
27. This is Assisted Dying: A Doctor's Story by Stefanie Green M.D.
28. Who We Are: Reflections on My Life and Canada by Elizabeth May
29. How to be a Climate Activist: Blueprints for a Better World by Chris Turner 
30. Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer by Roy Peter Clark
31. How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question by Sarah Bakewell 
32. Why I am Not a Christian: and Other Essays by Bertrand Russell 
33. Tolstoy by A.N.Wilson
34. Clean: The New Science of Skin and the Beauty of Doing Less by James Hamlin
35. Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome’s Greatest Politician by Anthony Everitt 
36. Loose Woman: my odyssey from lost to found by Beth Kaplan
37. Soap and Water & Common Sense: the definitive guide to viruses by Bonnie Henry
38. Original Minds by Eleanor Wachtel
39. If our Bodies Could Talk: Operating and Maintaining a Human Body by James Hamblin 
40. Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir by Ruth Reichl
41. Fatal Cruise: The Trial of Robert Frisbee by William Deverell
42. Myths to Live by: how we re-create ancient legends in our daily lives by Joseph Campbell 
43. The Good Virus: The Amazing Story and Forgotten Promise of the phage by Tom Ireland 
44. Short Guide to Writing about Biology by Jan Pechenik
45. Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human by Sidhartha and Mukherjee 
46. The Horde: how the Mongols Changed the World by Marie Favereau 
47. Chemistry for Breakfast: The Amazing Science of Everyday Life by Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim
48. The Farther Reaches of Human Nature by Abraham H. Maslow 
49. The Stories We Tell: Every Piece of Your Story Matters by Joanna Dean 
50. The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed by John Vaillant 
51. How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed by Slavenka Drakulić 
52. Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History by Robert Kaplan 
53. The Hired Man by Aminatta Forna (FICTION)
54. What's this Cat's Story? The Best of Seymour Krim by Seymour Krim and Peggy Brooks
55. Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia by Rebecca West 
56. How to Stand up to a Dictator: The Fight for our Future by Maria Ressa 
57. Nonviolence: The History of a Dangerous Idea by Mark Kurlansky and Dalai Lama
58. The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History by Kassia St Clair
59. Truman by David McCullough
60. Hotline by Dimitri Nasrallah (FICTION)

If you are interested in my reading strategy, you are welcome to check out this link to an article I wrote as a guest of Jane Friedman’s website: Read Faster!        

* As of April 2022, according to Statista, a German company specializing in market and consumer data.