Miss Kiki learns about love

Aug 7, 2015 | Belonging, Writing With Refugee Kids

It’s my third term at Milpera, the state school for refugee and migrant children here in Brisbane, and things are always changing. Every term new children arrive and I say good-bye to others who’ve graduated to local high schools. I never know who is going...

Home: a mother-son review of a mother-son show

Aug 3, 2015 | Reviews

Many thanks to Lisa Southgate and Matthew Southgate for this guest post on Margi Brown Ash’s play Home Mother:  I heard about Home accidentally. At the end of another Queensland Theatre Company event a woman with purple glasses and a mad fountain of white hair...

Radio: Nana Technology

Jun 23, 2015 | Radio

In May 2016 I flew down to Sydney to narrate my essay “Nana Technology” for ABC Radio National in Australia. Nana Technology won Canada’s 2015 carte blanche/CNFC competition for creative nonfiction. Now you can either listen to the adapted version or...

How to spend money when your husband is overseas

Jun 19, 2015 | My Stories

Before my husband returns home from another overseas work trip, I’d just like him to know that I’ve pledged and spent some money. In his name. June 20 is World Refugee Day. Every minute eight people flee their homes and leave everything to escape war, persecution and...

Writer Adam Gopnik on ephemera

Jun 12, 2015 | Belonging, Interesting Ephemera

Catching ephemera. It’s sounds magical, mystical, even playful. And it applies to belonging. To start unraveling the web of silken debris that forms belonging and identity we must loosen our hold on the logical and run with instinct and intuition. We cannot grab...

We are all Sonny

Jun 5, 2015 | My Stories

I met Sonny on the ferry from Vancouver to Victoria, the island capital of British Columbia. Sonny is 29. He works at local churches vacuuming floors, folding bulletins and any other jobs that need to be done. His teachers have described him as a social butterfly....