When I was in high school, I was deeply infatuated with a guy who worked at a nearby mall.
I’ve been meaning to ask Hollay Ghadery …What is your first memory of existing?I have a memory of taste; rubber. The rubber nipple of my bottle when I was a baby. I also recall the uncomfortable squirmy feeling of sitting in a wet diaper, and falling asleep in my crib listening to my dad dry my brother's hair in the bathroom across the hall from my room.
This is a house we moved from when I wasn't yet two years old, so the memory is from sometime before then.
Photo provided by Hollay GhaderyWhat is your first memory of being creative (writing, art making, etc.)?In kindergarten, I loved painting. I particularly loved mixing the darker green paint with white to make a lovely, whipped seafoam.
One day, I painted a flower using this colour and I gave it to my teacher, Miss Andrews. Miss Andrews had these jewel blue eyes and wore a pastel pink lipstick, and powdery looking sweaters. Her skirts were long and always rippled around her ankles like water. She was kind and one of the most beautiful people in my world.
When I gave her my painting, her face brightened, like my art had plugged her into the universe. She said she loved it—especially the colour—and was going to hang it on a wall in her home. That delicious warm sweetness of being seen and appreciated ... what can I say? I was hooked. I think I’ve spent my life chasing that high.
Can you recount a time (that you're willing to share) when you were embarrassed?Oh, there are so many. I am probably going to regret sharing this but in the spirit of embarrassment, I'll mention that when I was in highschool, I was deeply infatuated with a guy who worked at a nearby mall.
I thought he shared my feelings since he was always super flirty. So I kept buying things, but I also had limited funds, so I needed to return some of the items, which also worked as a convenient excuse to see him again. It was after the first couple of returns that his attitude toward me started to change. He became increasingly irate and at one point told me I "couldn't just keep returning things." He "works on commission." I fled the store that day without returning the Ralph Lauren dress shirt I’d brought with me. I still have it.
What do you cherish most about this world?Moments when I feel re-enchanted; when I am able to tap into that seemingly magical undercurrent of the universe that I used to feel all the time when I was a child, and believed in without reason or question. I can still feel this when one of my children holds my hand, or when I hear the call of a certain bird, or when I've been outside all day and am untethered and solar powered, or when I meet someone new and know— just *know*—this person is kindred.
Or when I am driving home at sunset and I feel the whole unbearable and ecstatic weight of being alive. I sense, for a moment, all the people who have come and gone and are yet to come. It's in these moments I am filled with such devastating love for this world and everyone in it, I’m sure I’ll dissolve.
What would you like to change about this world?I'd like more of us to try to tap into this kind of re-enchantment too. It is a choice as we get older, to seek it out.
Do you believe in ghosts? Why or why not?I don't know for sure, but there was that time author Adelle Purdham and I were chatting with the staff at the Kawartha Lakes Museum Archive after the launch of my poetry collection, Rebellion Box.
I was kinda taking the piss out of the staff, who were telling us all about how the place (which used to be a prison) was haunted. I was laughing and teasing them: "Sure, whatever you say, Barbara. There’s a little boy who cries in the upstairs bathroom. Riiiiiiight."
And Adelle was laughing with me (but I don't want to say that she wasn't believing the stories, because that's for her to speak to) when suddenly, a poster board on the wall flew a few feet across the room and hit Adelle in the head.
We were stunned silent for a moment. No more laughing…just Barbara smirking, knowingly.
Adelle later said that just before (or when?) the poster made impact, she felt a huge rush go through her body, which is EXACTLY what the person who painted the interior walls of my house said--a person who was also describing an experience while painting the inside of this same museum.
So, do ghosts exist? I don't know for sure, and I don't want to. (Hear that ghosts?! I'm high-strung enough! Leave me alone!)
Incidentally, I am doing another book event at this museum on June 12, 2025 at 2 p.m. with Julie Salverson if anyone wants to join us.
What are you working on now?The Unraveling of Ou is a work of literary fiction that examines challenges to self-awareness and acceptance within pervasive heteronormative, patriarchal, neurotypical frameworks. It is due out Spring 2026 with Palimpsest Press. So, I am preparing for this book at the moment (my first novel—gah!).
The story is told completely from the perspective of a sock puppet, Ecology Paul, who is the communicator of the main character, Minoo. Minoo became pregnant when she was 14 years old and was forced by her conservative Iranian mother to leave Iran, and her son, and rehome herself with a relative she'd never met in Ontario, Canada. Through the years, as she flounders to connect with her mother, her son, her eventual husband and daughter, as well as her own queer sexuality, Ecology Paul becomes her way of simultaneously making sense of her world and evading it. The puppet helps her but also keeps her from her life and the people she loves, and this tension starts to unspool from the first page of the story.
In the Persian language, "ou" is the word for both "he" and "she". The Unraveling of Ou shows how Minoo struggles to justify the puppet's existence and eventually, untangle herself from her dependence on it.
It is important to me that the entire book be told through the puppet's (and by extension, Minoo's) neurodivergent perspective, without the framework of a neurotypical or "reliable" narration to "balance" it out. I live with OCD, BDD, and eating disorders, and am seven years sober after over a decade of addiction. I have always disliked the delegitimizing assumption that neurodivergent perspectives are not reliable or intelligent and need to be contained within neurotypical narratives.
Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM and a host on NBN. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League’s BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com.
Fantasies are places we briefly visit; we can’t live there. The stories in Widow Fantasies deftly explore the subjugation of women through the often subversive act of fantasizing. From a variety of perspectives, through a symphony of voices, Widow Fantasies immerses the reader in the domestic rural gothic, offering up unforgettable stories from the shadowed lives of girls and women.Support Send My Love to AnyoneSupport Send My Love to Anyone by signing up for a monthly or yearly subscription, liking this post, or sharing it
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