About

The Value of Varied Experience

Making and Storytelling

I like to make things, and when I’m not making things, I like to help other people make things.

When I was a kid, I thought I wanted to make movies. As a freshman, I camped out on the front doorstep of the Film Department at Queen’s University to make sure I could get a place in FILM 110. I earned my undergraduate degree in Film Studies, finding occasion to dabble in the Theater and English Departments, as much as possible, too. I wrote short stories and screenplays and I started writing poetry. There were no graduate students in Film, so my first experience teaching storytelling came when I became a Teaching Assistant as an undergraduate. I finished my degree by writing and producing a thesis involving the projection of film throughout a live action play.

Motion picture film was expensive, so I learned still photography and spent hours in the darkroom, exploring how a story could be told in a single frame. Film and Photography made me pay attention in ways I never had before, to small meaningful gestures and the music of everyday dialogue.

But two of the most important things I learned about writing came later, as an MFA student in the Creative Writing program at the University of British Columbia. I consolidated an understanding of story structure there that set so deep in my being, it became part of the way that I understand the world, and I realized that I enjoyed helping my classmates develop their stories at least as much as I enjoyed writing my own.

Global Living

After being raised in Canada by Jamaican and Chinese-Jamaican parents, I have had the opportunity to live and work over twenty years in Colombia, Mexico, Spain, Thailand and Japan, with travels to many points between. Immersion into different cultures and languages has made me think about how ideas are expressed in words, and how the words we know can influence the formation of our ideas. An international life has helped me understand that there isn’t one thing that a story should be about or one form that a story should take, though the necessity of telling stories seems to be universal.

Educating and Counseling

In the years that I have worked overseas, I have been a teacher and a counselor. Teaching English and Drama and Photography and Film has given me a deep understanding of how stories work, and how to help anyone from 6th graders to adults understand them. It’s given me years of practice in providing critical feedback with the sensitivity that invites writers forward, rather than stopping them in their tracks. Teaching has given me the opportunity to cultivate creativity in students and colleagues, and be a cheerleader for the amazing things they create.

As a counselor, I recognize and appreciate the bravery and vulnerability it takes to share your story, whether it’s the real story of challenges you are experiencing now, or a fictional story woven up from the threads of your creative being. Working as a counselor has given me the ability to listen and ask questions that clarify a client’s intentions and needs. It has given me the skills to provide feedback with both the clarity necessary to make progress, and the sensitivity that recognizes and values the emotional investment that many writers feel when sharing their work, especially in early stages.