Missed Connections: A Memoir in Letters Never Sent

2022 Trillium Book Award Finalist

In 1992, I placed a personal ad in a local newspaper. I was 21 years old, just coming out, and looking for connection. In total, I received around 25 responses. There were 13 letters I never answered. The letters were tucked away, forgotten, inside a cardboard box. I recently came across those letters and sat down to read them again. I wondered how I might respond to them now. So I did what I hadn’t done 30 years earlier. I replied to those 13 letters.

Missed Connections: A Memoir in Letters Never Sent explores a range of topics, including body image, aging, desire, the price of secrecy, and the courage it takes to be unapologetically yourself.

Break in Case of Emergency

Governor General’s 2019 Literary Awards Finalist

Best Books of the Year – Apple Books, Globe and Mail, CBC Books, Quill & Quire

Break in Case of Emergency is my first YA novel. Life has been a struggle for 15-year-old Toby Goodman. Her mother died by suicide five years ago and her father abandoned her mother before Toby was born. When the book opens, Toby is living on a dairy farm with her grandparents and, unable to find any light in her world, she makes plans to follow a similar route as her mother. Those plans are suddenly interrupted when she’s told that her estranged father is returning home. And that he’s gay. And that he’s also a world-renowned female impersonator.

Break in Case of Emergency deals with teen mental health, difference, forgiveness and acceptance. Since its publication, I’ve been honoured to meet and share this book with younger readers and a few older ones along the way.

Natural Order

Best Books of the Year – Kobo, Toronto Star, Georgia Straight

Natural Order tells the story of a senior woman named Joyce Sparks coming to terms with the AIDS-related death of her gay son in the 1980s. She never came to terms with his death, or his homosexuality, or the lies she told that stemmed from her shame. But when a young, gay volunteer shows up at her long term care home, he holds the key to offering Joyce the one thing she’s desperate for: forgiveness.

I’ve been touched by how many people have told me they cried reading this book. (Full disclosure: I cried while writing it.) Evoking that level of emotion is the highest compliment a reader can give a writer.

Fruit: A Novel About a Boy and His Nipples

CBC Canada Reads Finalist

Amazon.ca – 100 Canadian Books to Read in a Lifetime

CBC – 100 Novels That Make You Proud to be a Canadian

Fruit was my debut novel, first published in Canada and in the U.S. as the retitled The Secret Fruit of Peter Paddington. The book made it all the way to the final round of the 2009 CBC Canada Reads. Fruit tells the story of 13-year-old Peter Paddington as he tries to fix everything wrong about himself before his Grade 8 year ends. Specifically, to lose weight, get a boy friend and silence his talking nipples.

In the years since its publication, I've grown increasingly proud of this book. I'm constantly surprised and touched by how many people have told me how they've related to Peter. Maybe we're all awkward adolescents at heart.

If you’re interested, check out an early excerpt of the book that appeared in The Church Wellesley Review.

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