It’s no secret that I love letters…love letters, and well, any letters, really!

For years I’ve been writing letters to Amelia Earhart, and in the last little while, I’ve been turning these letters into what one day will be a novel. AND the first letter of the project, which in all honesty is a love letter has been published in the inaugural issue of The Temz Review. You can read“You Showed Up Wearing Pants” here!

And this fall I wrote some of the hardest letters I’ve ever written. Citadel + Compagnie’s artistic director, Laurence Lemieux asked me to write letters from WWI soldiers to their next of kin in the weeks before the Battle of Vimy Ridge to accompany her dance piece, Jusqu’a Vimy.

It was brutal, reading actual letters from soldiers, just boys many of them – their optimism, their despair, their memories of home and often making light of the situations they were writing from.

I wrote letters, fictional letters based on the characters of the eight local soldiers in the dance piece. Every audience member will receive a letter when the show premieres at The Citadel in Toronto next week. You can read a few of the letters here!

P.S.: my love letter to DIY Halloween costumes was on CBC Radio’s Metro Morning this fall! You can listen to it here!)