The Landscape of Canadian Women's Crime Fiction

Tag: academia

  • The Helplessness of Grief and the Trauma of Academia: Maria Adelmann’s The Adjunct

    As I was reading Adelmann’s campus novel, I was thinking about one of the most brilliant and personable labour organizers I’ve ever met, the late Miranda Merklein. I miss her. Like this novel’s protagonist, Merklein had realistic expectations of a middle-class life as a college teacher: not a cossetted existence, but decent health insurance and…

  • Bonus Sunday CNF Essay: Horror in the Hallowed Halls of the Academy

    This piece is part of a collection of lyric essays that I wrote under the gentle and generous supervision of Becky Blake. U of T has a terrific Creative Writing Program Certificate through Continuing Studies; it was a valuable introduction, for me, to providing and receiving writing workshop feedback. My MFA, starting in May, will…

  • This Could Be the Day

    Photo: Robyn Hitchcock; used under a CC license I’m writing a book. Technically, two books. Piece of cake. “Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.” George Orwell I love this, because my writing and my chronic illnesses are closely linked, including both taking place largely in…