Hello Calgary!

It's fall and I've got a book out, so I am on the road! I'm honoured to be part of this amazing lineup of writers At Calgary Wordfest. Look at this!

I am especially thrilled to have the chance to present alongside Mariko Tamaki.

Mariko and Jillian Tamaki are a pair of cousins and a writer illustrator team. They are jointly responsible for two of my favourite graphic novels: Skim, and This One Summer. Until these books, I hadn’t read a graphic novel since my superhero kick in the 80s — The Watchmen, anyone? — and so I’m really not sure how Skim landed on my shelf, but I am so glad it did. Reading it was like learning to read another language, or learning to fall in love with stories, again, and for the first time. The interplay between text and visuals, between what’s said and unsaid, between interior and exterior is absolutely stunning. They feel so real and so tender, as if they were about my teenaged self, who I just want to love up and rescue.

I recently got to read Mariko's solo (not graphic) novel, Saving Montgomery Sole, and it casts the same spell.

So it was extra fun to get to rock out with Mariko. Look at us, taking crowd selfies like the Prime Minister. You don't often to get hold 400 school kids totally spell bound for an hour, but we did!

Next up, Vancouver Writers' Fest. Come see me here (Thursday morning with CC Humphreys), or here, (Thursday afternoon in a solo show)