CSA winning TV writer. Giller shortlisted novelist. Latest books: The Fake, The Spectacular, The Best Kind of People. Coming soon: Wild Failure (stories) '24
Launching May 14 in Canada, August 20th in America, my debut collection of stories & tenth book. I think this one is the best so far, thus am very nervous and would love pre-orders.
A thing I wish I knew about Thoreau as a teenager was that his mother brought him sandwiches and Walden Pond was on her property. I think I might have made some different life choices had I understood that.
I wish authors could get three close friends to blurb their books. “She was very depressed when she wrote this but she did it! We’re very proud. She has no other skills so we worry. Please buy this so she’ll stop talking about it.”
When I got pregnant in February my biggest fear was miscarrying by myself during the pandemic. And that exact thing happened. My best friend did come over, now we’re a pod of sorts, being alone for the worst of it would have been impossible. I thought I knew what a miscarriage ..
I'm still mad about it. I didn't get chased by guys yelling dyke, or have to physically step between an asshole and my butch partners more times than I can count while they yell "fucking dykes" at us, and then be told by a 20 something not to use the word dyke in my book.
Anyway I’m only writing about it here bc I feel like there should be more discussion about it? Also bc people have been so nice and offering baby things and I just want to be open about not needing that anymore.
Shout out to the Succession scene where Shiv says “you can do anything to me” and instead of complying Tom says it back to her - the first time a prestige HBO show addresses the age old problem of two bottoms dating each other.
@ElyKreimendahl
The gayest moment of my like was when in a heated argument at ikea my gf and I took our hoodies off and we were wearing identical t shirts, jeans and converse.
@thatclarafied
@jholtham
I hate it when a character needs money and then another (more moneyed) character offers them money and the story arc is that the poor one turns him down bc they have integrity or pride. The only time I've seen this play out in a more complex realistic way is on the sitcom Mom.
Was but it was nothing like I’d heard it described. It’s so crazy the discrepancy between how it’s described and the experience. And the feeling that going to the ER would have put me at more risk made it way more terrifying.
When I came out in 94 there was an uptick in teens coming out as LGBT, being unapologetic about it. There were articles about how straight kids could be duped into turning bi. Now those same articles are coming out about trans teens. Don't fall for it this time, journalists.
People got fired and went to jail after Walkerton. Is anyone in government liable for the people who will die of Covid after officials lie about how bad it is and tell them to take off their masks?
After 24 years in Toronto I’ve decided to move to a small town by myself. I am really scared to do this so please reply with all the times you moved somewhere alone and it was amazing.
That if you have a gay character in your television show, unless they have a queer best friend/community, and lovers, they're a token. The queer person w/ a group of entirely straight friends is an absolute fiction that centres the cis/straight supposedly 'universal' audience.
I just encountered, in a professional context, someone telling me that the word dyke was offensive. Professors, mentors, people who talk to young folks; please tell them to read queer history! Talk to someone over 25. For the life of god this is what might send me to the woods.
Amazon just added what I think is a show with one of the best pilots/strongest first seasons - UNreal - that hardly anyone saw. It’s a fictional show about the staff/crew of The Bachelor written by someone who used to produce it. It’s so smart/feminist/awful in the best way.
So I have some news! I’m 9 weeks pregnant and my friend Kaleb and I are going to be co-parenting together. Truly a strange time to be alone in my apartment during a pandemic finishing a novel about motherhood and autonomy. Due Oct 27. But yes I’m hoping for a Libra obvs.
@ElyKreimendahl
The queerest moment of my life was when my ex gf and I were fighting at IKEA and both took off our hoodies and realized we were wearing matching t shirts.
Really wish Mrs. Maisel wasn’t continuing the TV tradition of straight writers creating a queer character who is inexplicably celibate in a way that makes no earthly sense. Susie would have so many femmes on her arm. It’s Michel in Gilmore Girls all over again & it’s boring?
Real cancel culture is editors telling me they wanted my book but marketing said no because it was too gay. It's the lady at the awards table saying, "Oh I've never met a transsexual!" to my bf & reviewers calling my characters "promiscuous" when they couldn't say gay anymore.
More cis teens in Canada get breast implants than trans teens get top surgery, which is also gender affirming surgery. No one cares about that. This isn't about bodily autonomy or innocence this is about preserving hetero and cis normative bodies as the only good body.
I heard something weird and couldn’t figure it out and then I realized it must be the sound of all the women on earth deciding they don’t want to fuck Jeff Goldblum anymore.
My only harsh writing advice is that no one cares about your book as much as you do & you can’t control how your book is read and it’s best to have a sense of humor about it. (EG, Goodreads, is, ultimately, hilarious in that we are all doomed/art is meaningless.)
I just need a card I can hand out to new people that says “please don’t talk about your diet or “healthy choices” in front of me. Not just because I don’t care but imagine I talked about trying desperately not to look like you immediately upon meeting you?”
When you write pieces about TV relationships being toxic, what do you think fictional relationship stories should look like? Should they have no conflict? Should they both be evolved & morally perfect? Should we just watch characters go to respectful couples therapy sessions?
Is Toronto still so incredibly uptight that we’re having a drinking in parks debate when the world is literally ending? It is never not embarrassing to live here.
I messaged with a friend who also thinks prolonged singlehood and living alone is a surprisingly great thing. Once you get used to it, it is hard to think about dating anyone longterm who isn't spectacular compared to the sparkling dream of your very own house/life.
Even the way the CBC describes the van killer as “he killed because he was tired of women rejecting him.” No, he killed bc he hated women and was literal friends with other terrorists who died conducting mass terror because they hated women.
I feel like an accurate measurement of queer and trans acceptance will be when the top ten most banned books of the year are no longer exclusively LGBT.
No one cares as much about your book as you do, no one will ever read it precisely the way you intended them to, the majority of the feedback you will get from readers will be somewhat baffling, and then you will write something else.
@ElyKreimendahl
ok I feel less crazy now! My ex's kids always carry water bottles and I was like, I do not remember even drinking a glass of water until bottled water became a thing in high school.
@yrfatfriend
So angering, especially when you consider how they push a dangerous surgery like this onto kids but won’t allow for gender confirming healthcare that is the opposite of dangerous
I'm a
@GillerPrize
-shortlisted author and I don't believe anyone should be arrested for peaceful civil disobedience. I stand with the protestors who disrupted the awards and ask that the charges be dropped.
I think a lot of intergenerational queer conflict makes sense when you think about the teens who watched Greg Araki movies on VHS to see gay shit and the teens who watched Glee with their parents.
What I'd like people in their 20s to understand is that it will be truly baffling who of your peers will become life coaches and spiritual leaders when you're all in your 40s.
I take back any shit I’ve talked about Ryan Murphy, him using his speech to talk about brave queer and trans actors coming out is so moving. And making all these actors listen to it - Chefs kiss.
I would say the majority of Canadian kids learned sex ed from Degrassi Junior High & Degrassi High. So I guess this means we have to bring Degrassi back.
I tried Botox for book tour vanity purposes &I’m only confessing this bc it cured my headaches. Imagine learning that chronic headaches were from nervously furrowing my brow 24/7 since adolescence. Anyway, life is a humbling journey.
Nothing is more bittersweet than realizing that waking up early and immediately exercising makes your precarious mental health situation feel less precarious. What's next, should I drink more water? Not actively hate myself? This is bullshit.
Ive become obsessed with the pride slogans of corps, 95% of which do not mention LGBT at all, just vague generalizations about “love”. PC Financial is Love Wins, TD is We Are All One, Scotia is scotiaproud etc. The first bank that decides on “I heart queers” gets my cash 4 life.
I have to say, Trudeau is really managing this well. Imagine Harper? Or Sheer? Shudder. I’m NDP forever but listening to these briefings I’m honestly impressed.
Headlines like "we shouldn't WANT to return to normal" exhaust me. I can long to hug a friend & go to the movies & gossip at the back of a poetry reading while still hoping for that socialist utopia thanks.
Maybe the worst part of being single - tbh it's most pretty great - is handing in a book and then there's no one to high five. So high five me everyone in my computer.
Reading that essay about the woman who stopped cooking for her husband - a great piece - made me totally confused, like this is a normal thing straight women do and put up with in 2018? Being queer is great, guys; I chose it, so can you.
I’m actually shocked that every time I turn on CBC or glance at American literary media, Atwood remains completely unscathed even while openly supporting Men’s Rights nonsense and a historic legal case being tried (right now!) against the free speech of women writers.
Oh behalf of the snobby indie rock 23 year old i once was, for those watching the Woodstock 99 documentary who were too young to be there, it was not cool. No one cool went. It was for jocks with big necks who liked The Offspring.
I can’t believe how CBC news wrote the headline for the Encampment story. How can you watch the footage of cops beating peaceful protestors at random and write “protestors threw objects at police” as your first words into the story.
Sad about Anne Heche. She was the first out femme in Hollywood when she was with Ellen, and mocked for years when she had a public nervous breakdown. Queer celebrities have only been visibly out for like 42 minutes all things considered, I remember how much of a big deal it was.
How can gay men like Dan Savage - who parrot TERF talking points - not realize they’re coming for all of us, and that the right wing targeting of trans kids is a tactic they pivoted to after gay marriage became too palatable.
Don't sleep on Arkansas.
In addition to a pair of explicitly anti-trans bills, the state just snuck in a trans medical care ban through the back door. The bill would allow doctors to refuse service to LGBTQ+ patients, including trans youth.
Seeing the naked chick in front of the cops:
Activist brain: that’s an old tactic, glad it worked I guess
Feminist brain: if she wasn’t white and thin this wouldn’t be talked about in the same way, maybe would have ended in violence
Gay brain: that is a very hot photo
I had an intellectual preoccupation with motherhood & femme autonomy while writing my new novel & made peace with never having kids. Then I got pregnant during the final edits, right before the pandemic. I wrote about miscarrying during Covid lockdown.
I don’t want to startle anyone but I just had a meeting with American &Canadian editors and my slutty little femme book is coming out in February 2021 and it’s called The Spectacular and I have been filled with self loathing about it all year but it is finally coming together!
When I was in LA working on Schitt's Creek I went to a party of mostly American TV writers and no one knew the show at the time, and I can't help but feel pretty psyched about the awards sweep tonight. Very exciting for the Canadian TV industry.
When people write about cancel culture, especially authors, why isn’t their first example that the top ten most censored or banned books every year are LGBT, mostly for youth?
This guy has another two days. He lasted 2 years longer than his 4 month diagnosis. The vet said if we wait much longer he will suffer. I’ll sit with him and give him endless treats and tuna, I guess.
Also as part of my personal/eternal/ongoing fat girl self-esteem project, here are some terrifying-at-the-time but ultimately fine ok whatever full body options.
Of course the Oh She Glows vegan cookbook writer is an anti-vaxxer expressing solidarity with a white supremacist lead movement. If you’re a wellness leader right now that’s the whole fucking gig and it’s criminal.
Trying to date right now is very strange. What do I do for fun? I wait for the 4pm squirrel. I watch my Tik Tok goats. My new manuscript is just ten pages of the word vaccine.
The only Jordan Peterson story I want to read is about how all his neighbours in the Annex fucking hate him bc he built a fourth story on his house that blocks out the sun for everyone around him.
I can't believe Ontario is announcing the next priority stage of people who can get the vaccine and it's PEOPLE I ALREADY THOUGHT COULD GET THE VACCINE. Like, we're still at "people over 80" when my 30 something friends are getting it in the states.
Thousands of people will be disabled and have no official record and be denied services and care. People will work and go out when they’re sick bc there are no rules anymore and so disabled and vulnerable people will get sick and die. This is basically governmental manslaughter.
Someone on Goodreads complained that the teenagers have sex in one of my novels. Have I hit my head too hard? What is happening? When did 17 year olds become the new 6 year olds?
An author I hate lives on my street & walks by 2X/day. (She reads WAY over time; is rude to everyone 'below' her; is straight but hit on my gf in front of me the way thin women do when bothered by hot people who date fat women) & it pleases me how bad her quarantine fashion is.
I kind of like what Sarah Silverman says about Louis? It's particular to their history/friendship, she doesn't condone what he did when he had power over others, she contextualizes the way the headline sets the piece up to be black & white, & it's an honest reaction
Toronto, we have that site where you can rent people's pools/yards by the hour. I just booked a pool for the afternoon I am officially two weeks post second vax and it feels like Xmas.
Pride is not about “love” , diversity or Winners rainbow fans, it’s about commemorating the times cops kicked our heads in & making sure that doesn’t happen again, while being proud that we’re alive and fuck you etc anyway I wrote a thing for the Globe about this, out tomorrow
I used to worry about dying without deleting porn in my search history but now I worry about how many times I’ve had to google “how long does it take to boil an egg?”
Another store opened in my neighbourhood that appears to sell three crystal necklaces, two succulents, designer straw fedoras and two art books. These store should just be called My Parents Are Rich or We Sell Edibles in the Back.