Wearing the guest associate editor beret for Taddle Creek magazine

I’m honoured and excited to be a guest associate editor for Taddle Creek, and I’m looking forward bringing my storytelling approach to the magazine. (I wish the lovely and talented Grace O’Connell the very best as she moves on.)

While the magazine’s official Submission Guidelines are both smart and well-honed, I do have important criteria I’ll be on the lookout for, in support of the editor-in-chief’s overall vision:

Stories and poems about the wide range of experiences and characters in the city today.
Resonant themes that compel us to pause and think, whether they be surprising, moody, chilling, irreverent, inspiring or a combination therein.
Diverse voices.
Honest work that cuts through (“How empty and frustrating it is for a reader to invest their time and attention in something and to feel that the agenda is basically to show you that the writer is clever.” See David Foster Wallace, quoted).
Writing with “a good, natural, steady rhythm” (See Haruki Murakami, quoted)—I am a bass player, afterall.

I’ll add that the magazine was instrumental in launching me on my path to becoming a novelist by giving me the confidence to pursue the wild dream that resulted in Circle of Stones. It published an early version of the “Lucy” chapter (as the story, “Extreme Ironing”), a version of the “Hélène” chapter (as the story “Circle of Stones”) and let me profile the wonderful Elyse Friedman, whose work I admire. The magazine put faith in my writing, and it helped, a million times over, to have a believer. In turn, I’m looking forward to finding some new work to believe in.

Happy reading.

Oh, and p.s. subscribe, why don’t you?