journalism

No Such Thing: Read the Reviews

/ Lynne Melcombe / Leave a comment

“I bought the Kindle version to read on a trip, thinking there might be a moment here and there when I could relax with a book. Well. I was immediately absorbed and compelled to read it every chance I had. I am so glad you were able to get it out there. It’s not only a very good read, but a very important investigation of a faulty system, which you so skillfully exposed. It is a poignant personal story that will resonate with many, I’m sure, but also a journalistic tour de force.”

front cover of book with words in white against a blue background "No Such Thing: A True Story of "Mild" Traumatic Brain Injury and My Twenty-Year (so far) Recovery"

“Lynne Malcolm’s [sic] life changes when a chair she has been asked to sit in during a parent-teacher interview collapses and her head crashes into something hard. The resulting traumatic brain injury changes her life. What I loved about this book is how the writer combined the very personal story about her injury, how it affected her work, her relationship and her daily life with research about traumatic brain injuries. These types of injuries are not uncommon and they are serious. This book informs and supports people who have experienced traumatic brain injuries and helps explain to those of us lucky enough not to have had this kind of injury what others are going through. An excellent read.”

“I literally couldn’t put this book down. I read it in one day (with breaks). It combines compelling storytelling, great research into current physical and psychological knowledge, and deep understanding of the human side of illness and pain. The denial and minimization of a head injury, from the moment it happened, shows how poorly our society deals with accidents, illness and pain. I found the actions and behaviour of many of the people the author encountered shocking. Her honesty and vulnerability in telling us how this affected even the core of her life is refreshing. It stands in stark contrast to the dishonesty and lack of empathy among educators, doctors, and lawyers. I’m sure this book will help thousands of readers.”

“This is very compelling read detailing the arduous personal journey of recovery from concussion, a poignant story that will resonate with many who have experienced the frustration of an ailment that is not properly recognized. It is also an important investigation into the failures in our justice system which put immense barriers in the way of successfully obtaining compensation from parties whose actions have resulted in personal injury.”

“This excellent read shared a deeply personal experience with thoughtful and comprehensive research. Anyone who has a traumatic brain injury or knows someone with a traumatic brain injury would benefit from this book.”

“I finished this book in three reads. Although the content wasn’t an easy read, the writing certainly was. I enjoyed the style, going back and forth between personal memories and research. In some books, this can make it difficult to follow, but not so with your book! Congrats!”

“Lynne Melcombe’s telling of her concussion journey is generous, heartbreaking and ultimately inspiring. At a parent/teacher interview her chair falls apart and so does her life. No Such Thing shows with devastating detail how a single concussion can do enormous damage to any one of us, be it from a simple fall, a common car accident or (as in my case) a few seconds of street violence on a sunny afternoon. Concussions are often called invisible injuries. Lynne’s brave struggle to overcome hers is a revealing insider’s view.”

“This is an important book that deserves a wide audience. Beautifully written with raw honesty, No Such Thing is a blessing for concussion sufferers and a vital call for empathy and understanding from friends, family and anyone working in health care, insurance, education or policymaking.”

“One day in the middle of an ordinary life, [Lynne Melcombe] went to what should have been an unremarkable meeting and made a random choice. No Such Thing: A True Story of “Mild” Traumatic Brain Injury and My Twenty-Year (so far) Recovery is her harrowing account of what followed that random choice—from the gaslighting, indifference, and ignorance of healthcare professionals to the gotcha tactics of shareholder-driven insurance company lawyers. No Such Thing is a painfully personal but powerful memoir of Melcombe’s struggle to heal from a so-called “mild” brain injury, but it is also a well-researched indictment of medical, legal and political failure. It’s a must-read for anyone who might one day make a random choice in the middle of an unremarkable meeting. Which is to say all of us.”

Purchase your book or add your review to my comment section, my GoodReads page, or one (or more) of my book sale pages, below.

Paperback: Indigo.ca Amazon.ca Amazon.com Barnes & Noble
Ebook: Rakuten Kobo ebooks.com Kindle.ca Kindle.com iTunes nook

Book Launch for No Such Thing: My Journey Through Mild Traumatic Brain Injury

/ Lynne Melcombe / Leave a comment

Please join me as I launch my first book, No Such Thing: A True Story of “Mild” Traumatic Brain Injury and My Twenty-Year (so far) Recovery (Iguana Books, 2026).

Saturday October 17, 6:30 PM, Sadhana Yoga and Sound, #3 (upstairs) 2559 Shaughnessy Street, Port Coquitlam, BC

A few excerpts:

Book cover titled 'no such thing' by Lynne Melcombe, featuring a blue background and white text. The subtitle reads 'A True Story of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury and My Twenty-Year (so far) Recovery'.

From Chapter 1

I’ve often idly wondered why people make some of the smallest decisions: Does it matter which cookie I pick up from the plate or which stall I choose in a public bathroom? Will my choice change the course of my life?

On November 27, 2003, at 3:30 p.m., I make one of those random choices. I work at my desk until about 2:00 p.m. At around 2:45, I run a brush through my hair and swish a dollop of toothpaste around my mouth. By 3:00, I’m picking up my younger daughter from her elementary school. At 3:15, we’re rushing into her big sister’s high school, unaware that by 4:30 I’ll be signing in at the emergency department of the local hospital.

From Chapter 3: 1 Week Out

The Hotel Vancouver is a historic landmark, the last luxury hotel on the original Canadian Pacific Railway line. The tile floors are polished to a high sheen, the staff are as crisp and efficient as their uniforms, and the dimly lit piano bar serves great martinis. But on December 3, a week to the day after my fall, I’m not up to a drink or music. I’m there to meet with the employer in charge of the three contracts I’ve had to cancel, who is in Vancouver on other business. At the time, his company is my largest source of income, and I still believe I’ll be better in a few days, so it seems wise to accept his invitation. I take a cab from Port Moody to downtown Vancouver.

We sit in a quiet conversation area off to one side of the lobby. I’ve rested for the whole day, hoping my headache will remain at bay and I’ll be able to listen intelligently. My pain eases as I relax into casual conversation, and by the end of the meeting it’s receded enough that when he asks me to accompany him to a second and possibly a third meeting that evening, I agree.

We take a cab from the hotel to a house in Vancouver’s posh Point Grey area, where the client welcomes us into her home. Her furnishings have a sleek Scandinavian look, several cuts above IKEA. The décor is all neutral tones: off white and light tan with dark brown and black accents. The view out the massive back window on the main floor is enviable: twinkling city lights outline English Bay and the Burrard Street Bridge as it traverses False Creek from Kitsilano to the West End. Up on Grouse Mountain the floodlights illuminating the main ski run hang in the night sky above the city like a constellation.

The client is warm, and the conversation appears lively—but I can’t follow it. I know they’re speaking English the same way I can identify several languages by their sound and a few words, but I have no idea what they’re saying. The pressure in my head started up again in the cab, and as I try to focus my attention the vise-like feeling intensifies. As minutes tick painfully by, I realize I can no longer pick out even occasional words. When my boss and I step out the door and he asks if I’m ready for the next meeting, I feel incredulous. My pain is so bad I think it must be visible—blood should be trickling out of my eyes and ears or seeping through my pores. Politely declining his invitation, I spend an agonizing hour in a cab back to Port Moody.

From Chapter 3: 3 Weeks Out

I used to love Christmas shopping. I enjoyed taking my time and finding just the right gift for everyone. As the kids have grown older, it’s become harder to find things within our budget for them. At some point, my husband pointed out that if we left shopping until just before Christmas, those big-ticket items would be on sale; things we couldn’t afford in November become manageable by mid-December.

On December 20, we go shopping. We have a list. We know what we want for each person, and I know where we’re most likely to find it. We go into a store, find the item, and then my husband stands in line to pay while I make my way slowly out of the store and look for a place to sit down. When he emerges, he helps me up and I hold his arm for balance as we walk slowly to the next store.

The first day out, I manage a couple of hours of shopping. The second day, it’s ninety minutes. The third day, an hour. By December 24, with time running out, he says he’ll have to finish shopping without me.

“I’m sorry, Lynne. I know you love Christmas shopping.”

“It’s okay.”

“If it weren’t Christmas Eve—”

“I know. We’re out of time.”

I stay home with our seven-year-old and make the best of it. I don’t turn on my computer all day. We wrap gifts, fussing over the best paper for each person, picking the right colour of tissue paper to stuff gift bags, tying everything up with beautiful ribbons and handmade bows. Then we settle in on the twin recliners in the family room to watch a movie. For the first time since the accident, I feel good all day.

I feel good on Christmas Day too. I enjoy opening gifts with the family, cleaning up the mess afterward, and making our traditional Christmas breakfast of pancakes with maple syrup, sausages, and bacon. Mid-afternoon, my sister arrives with her three children, three foster children, and three-year-old grandson. After another round of gift-giving, it’s time to get ready for dinner at the home of another friend. For years, we’ve had large, loud holiday dinners, including fifteen to twenty people from three families and sometimes an extra friend or two. We take turns hosting, with the host family buying and cooking a twenty-five-pound turkey and the others supplying everything else.

This year, dinner is at the home of friends, and it’s my sister’s turn to bring potatoes and vegetables. She arrives at our house with all the vegetables and potatoes in bags, looking for help with the cutting and chopping. Even with all the adults pitching in, it takes two hours. We haven’t been working for long when I begin to feel the familiar tingling at my temples, the pressure starting at the crown of my head and spreading downward, a hat band tightening like a vise, the burning in my neck and right arm. I don’t say anything. I make it through dinner at our friends’ home, but by the time the desserts come out I have to retreat to the couch with a heating pad to my head.

This scene will repeat itself at every family dinner for years. A decade later, I will give up on them. We will start having smaller dinners at home with just immediate family. Two decades later, after the divorce, my children will be the ones hosting family dinners. I will attend, but I will always leave early. 

An activity that was perfectly normal before the injury, events I fully enjoyed, will never be normal again.

From Chapter 9: 18 Months Out

Around that time, my family life begins falling apart. It starts with one of my younger daughter’s school field trips. One of many reasons I’ve chosen self-employment is the flexibility it gives me to be involved in my children’s lives. When my older kids were in elementary school and now with my youngest, I often volunteer as a parent chaperone or driver on field trips.

In June 2005 I want to accompany my youngest daughter on her year-end class trip to the water slides near Hope, BC, but I can’t imagine myself coping with the noise and driving involved in accompanying a busload of excited nine-year-olds on a full-day outing, much less enduring the neck-snapping jostling of the slides. My son and a friend of his offer to drive the three of us there in the family car. They play in the water slides with my little girl; I’m just there. It’s not great, but it’s the best I can do. The day goes well enough, but I arrive home with a headache that persists for four days. I can do little but lie in a dark, quiet room and wait for it to pass, wondering how I’ll explain missed deadlines to clients this time.

More school field trips will be out of the question. I feel like I’m letting my daughter down. My husband, who works in an inner-city elementary school, tells me to stop beating myself up. “She’s well taken care of. Plenty of parents work full time and don’t have the opportunity to go on field trips with their kids. This is not going to damage her for life.”

“We used to be so close. We’re not anymore, and I don’t know how to fix that without taking time off work.”

“How can we afford that?” he asks. I have no answer. Conversation over. 

In the years that follow, I feel the distance between her and me growing. She no longer confides in me; she goes to her father or her siblings. I miss her. After the lawsuit ends, I try to do fun activities with her, to intervene on her behalf when things in her life go awry, and sometimes to reassert myself as a person of authority in her life. Most of my efforts only seem to increase the distance between us.

Many years later, she shares with me how much pain my sudden disappearance from an active role in her life caused her. Given how hard it is for adults to understand brain trauma, it’s no surprise that, as a seven-year-old, she doesn’t understand what’s happening. All she knows is that I used to wake her in the morning by holding her in my arms and singing “You are my sunshine,” and then one day I stopped. It’s like I vanished. I’m there physically but I’m not “there” at all.

From Chapter 13: 3.5 Years Out

The mediation takes place in an office building in downtown Vancouver. I wear navy-blue dress pants and a waist-length navy-blue cardigan—or is it grey pants and a knee-length grey cardigan? Regardless, they are consignment-store finds, as usual, with the sweater (either one of them) just a tad too large in the shoulders. We sit at a conference table that could accommodate up to a dozen people. There is a smaller, separate room where my husband waits and reads his book and to which Anu and I retreat for breaks. LB, her law student, and the in-house counsel for the insurance company, who has taken the ferry over from Victoria for the day, take their breaks in our main meeting room.

I don’t remember the name of the insurance company’s in-house lawyer, only that Anu has told me she has a reputation for playing hardball, which she relies on for credibility in her professional world. She is slim, has short hair, and wears a hearing aid. LB sits in the middle on the opposite side of the table, her student on her left and the in-house lawyer on her right. Anu sits to my right and the mediator, a tall, solid man in his fifties dressed in a sport jacket and casual shirt, sits at the head of the table with a wall-to-wall window behind him. 

It’s a drizzly March morning. The mediator introduces himself and outlines why we’re here. Anu presents the facts of our case. LB gives the defense’s response. I don’t remember much more than that. 

Around noon, we break for lunch. A sumptuous buffet has been catered in—bread rolls and croissants, deli meats and cheeses, crudités with dips, chunks of fresh tropical fruits. It’s far more than eight people (including my husband) can eat. I wonder who is paying for it and what will happen with the leftovers.

After lunch, on my way back from the ladies’ room, I walk past the open door to the conference room. A burst of laughter draws my attention, and I glance in. The three lawyers are sitting in their chairs, chatting and laughing. Catching my glance, LB speaks to me warmly.

“Did you want to join us?” she asks. “We’re just comparing the gargoyles on the building across the street to men we know.”

“No. Thanks.” She wants me to let my guard down. Crikey. Can’t she even take a lunch break? 

From Afterthoughts: 23 Years Out 

My neurologist, Dr. GR, was one of the people who believed me from the start when I told him about my pain. He keeps a file on his computer of different people in different places across the centuries who have reported similar symptoms after a hard hit to the head. Detractors write off such reports as coincidence—or worse, that the mTBI sufferers those reports track were malingering. One of the claims I’ve heard most often is that it simply doesn’t make sense that suddenly, after millennia of evolution, humans are suffering from an epidemic of injuries we’ve never suffered from before.

But it doesn’t take much thinking to realize that the world we inhabit today is entirely different than it was even a century ago. A century ago, most lifestyles still entailed a good deal of physical labour, so most humans had strong backs and necks to provide some protection against such injuries. Even when people were injured, the jobs they returned to were less likely than they are now to involve sitting at a desk, doing close visual work, and reading off a computer screen, all of which are known to cause their own injuries to the neck and the vision system as well as to exacerbate injuries acquired in other ways.

Most jobs today, from retail sales to farming, demand a level of social and intellectual skills they didn’t require a century ago, not to mention technological capacity most of us could not imagine as recently as my first job in retail at the age of sixteen. In this era, whether mild traumatic brain injuries are happening more frequently or are just reported more often and taken more seriously is not the point; the point is that if I had lived a century earlier and my day consisted of cleaning and baking, I probably would have felt better more quickly precisely because I would have had a stronger body and been putting fewer demands on my brain than in almost any job I could do in this century. And because of all this technology, almost everything we do demands more knowledge and training than ever before and has more consequences if not done to higher standards of quality, timeliness, and cost than ever before.

Against this backdrop, the evolutionary argument doesn’t hold up. Just as the planet didn’t evolve to tolerate the level of carbon our society pumps out in a day, month, or year, humans didn’t evolve for the way most of us, at least in Western culture, now live our lives. Sitting at a desk all day, walking while hunched over cell phones, or sitting in gridlocked traffic for a couple of hours every day is not good for our bodies. So, when are we going to recognize it’s not only our bodies that have not had time to adapt to the stressful, sedentary lives many of us live? Our brains, too, are being taxed in ways that evolution has not had enough time to catch up to.

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To leave a review, visit the above sites or Goodreads.

Celebrating Indigenous Voices: Memorable Reads for Reconciliation

/ Lynne Melcombe / Leave a comment

This week, in observation of National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on Wednesday September 30, instead of my usual reviews of books published by graduates of University of King’s College’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction program I’m going to write about several books I’ve enjoyed by Indigenous authors in Canada.

Book cover of 'One Native Life' by Richard Wagamese, featuring a textured white background resembling birch bark with the title and author's name prominently displayed.

One of my favourite authors is Richard Wagamese. He was a brilliant novelist, but I especially love his two memoirs, One Native Life (Douglas & McIntyre, 2008) and One Story, One Song (D&M, 2011). Wagamese did not have an easy life (sadly, he died in 2017). His parents, residential school survivors, were denied the opportunity to learn how to parent from their own parents. Wagamese was taken into government care at a young age and grew up in a series of white foster homes.

As a young journalist and activist, he too became addicted to alcohol. You’d think his memoirs would be sad but instead they’re uplifting. In the introduction to One Native Life, he talks about realizing that life alternates between periods of darkness and light. Both his memoirs comprise a series of short essays (1000–1500 words) divided into four parts (four being a powerful number in some Indigenous cultures). Each essay deals with a time in his life when he found something beautiful nestled in the darkness.

Alicia Elliott’s award-winning debut, A Mind Spread Out on the Ground (Anchor Canada, 2020) is another memoir-in-essays. I was lucky enough to hear Elliott speak at a conference of the Creative Nonfiction Collective a few years ago. For someone so young, she is remarkably wise; her prose is sharp and witty, and she doesn’t pull any punches. Where Wagamese writes about growing up with the legacy of the residential school system—a child of the sixties scoop—Elliott writes about more recent phenomena. For example, at one point her school created a special class meant to teach Indigenous children about their heritage. We white people are such classic examples of that saying, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

I’ve just finished re-reading Maria Campbell’s Halfbreed (Penguin Random House, 2025), originally published in 1973. I was a young teenager when I read it the first time, and I remember being appalled at the things she endured—and that was the version that excluded her rape by two RCMP officers. Campbell is credited with writing the foundational book on which an entire genre of Indigenous literature in Canada has been built.

I also recently read Wab Kinew’s The Reason You Walk (Penguin, 2015), a multi-award-winning memoir of another life marred by the legacy of residential schools, fractured family relationships, and alcoholism. By now, Kinew’s personal story is well known: musician, DJ, broadcast journalist, writer, and now the NDP premier of Manitoba. Kinew appears regularly in the news and on social media where he constantly impresses me with his down-to-earth, common-sense approach to life and politics. I regularly hear people referring to him as the man who will be the first Indigenous prime minister of Canada. I would work on that election campaign.

Another book on my shelf is Unreconciled: Family, Truth, and Indigenous Resistance by Jesse Wente (Penguin Random House, 2021). The jacket copy sums it up: “Part memoir and part manifesto, Unreconciled calls for a new, respectful relationship between Canada and Indigenous Peoples. Wente argues that “’reconciliation’ is a flawed concept: peace between First Nations and the state of Canada can’t be recovered through reconciliation because no such relationship ever existed.” This is the kind of memoir I strive to write, one that seamlessly blends research with memory, supporting my personal perceptions with others’ objective facts—memoir that makes a point.

There have not been a lot of books about Indigeneity to emerge from the master’s program but a couple stand out. Jessica McDiarmid’s national bestseller Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (Anchor Canada, 2019) offers an unsparing look at the tragedy of so many Indigenous women disappearing along a remote stretch of highway in BC that it’s now known as the Highway of Tears. Deeply researched and compellingly written, Highway of Tears was a finalist for both the prestigious RBC Taylor Prize and the Hubert Evans nonfiction prize and was named a Hill Times best book. 

Book cover for 'The Reason You Walk' by Wab Kinew featuring a close-up of the author with awards highlighted, including '#1 National Bestseller' and 'Globe and Mail Best Book'.

As the title suggests, Virginia Heffernan’s Ring of Fire: High-Stakes Mining in a Lowlands Wilderness (ECW 2023) is not a book about Indigenous People. The first and second of three parts walk us through what the Ring of Fire is (a remote and largely inaccessible 5,000-sq km crescent of land in Northern Canada rich in deposits of critical minerals) and reviews the history of and people involved in trying to exploit this mining jackpot, as well as environmental issues arising from such exploitation.

Part 3 then takes a close look at what has been overlooked far too often: the potential impacts on the people who have lived and practised a way of life on this land for almost as long as the rivers have run into James and Hudson’s Bays. Heffernan advocates for an approach that truly involves the Indigenous People who live on this land. Further, it should include their full participation in extracting minerals in ways that will benefit the lives and communities of those who live there while minimizing the environmental impact of mining in this fragile sub-Arctic ecosystem. 

Next on my reading list is Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Silence to Strength: Writings and Reflections on the Sixties Scoop edited by Christine Miskonoodinkwe Smith, and 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act: Helping Canadians Make Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples a Reality by Bob Joseph.

This National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, I renew my commitment to read as many books as possible by Indigenous authors and continue earning the right to think of myself as an Indigenous ally.

Inspiring Books for the International Day of Peace

/ Lynne Melcombe / Leave a comment
A picture of the Hadhad family, a young man in front, an older man behind him, and two girls behind them, against a clear blue Nova Scotia sky.

September 21 is the International Day of Peace, a day I think we should all be aware of, a day to set aside all we disagree on and focus on what we can agree on, a day to set aside extremism and seek common ground. So, today’s post focuses on three books related, sometimes loosely, to peace. 

First up, Peace by Chocolate: The Hadhad Family’s Remarkable Journey from Syria to Canada (Goose Lane Editions, 2020) by Jon Tattrie (class of 2020). I don’t often cry when I read books, but I needed a box of tissue by the time I finished this one. The story of what this family went through under the Assad regime, the sacrifices they made to get to Canada, the sheer resilience of rebuilding their successful chocolate business starting in the kitchen of the home they were staying in—it’s cliché to say it, but it’s inspiring. A wonderful reminder of what humans can do when we’re really put to it. 

A many coloured kaleidoscope with the book title, The Heart of Homestay, in the. middle

I think Jennifer Wilson’s (class of 2025) book, The Heart of Homestay: Creating Meaningful Connections When Hosting International Students (Page Two, 2025) is a book about peace. Peace happens when people understand and appreciate each other, and that includes—perhaps especially includes—people from different cultures. I have a degree in anthropology, the study of cultures, and I’ve travelled widely. But as much as I learned about different cultures through university and in my years of wandering, the many years that my ex-husband and I hosted international students added so much more to my whole family’s ability to understand and appreciate other cultures. And Wilson’s book reflected so many of our experiences with our children from other mothers. If you ever plan to host international students, or you’re already doing it, this is an excellent guide to making the world a better, more peaceful place. 

A turquoise-blue background with the title, The Worst Songs in the World, in which letters, and beside the title an image in yellow of a bugle standing on the floor, the music end down and the mouthpiece end up. with a flag coming out of the top.

Finally, there’s David Pate’s (class of 2023) unusual and often funny book The Worst Songs in the World: The Terrible Truth about National Anthems. From Pate, I learned that, while national anthems are supposed to evoke national pride in us—and I have to admit that hearing a particularly stirring version of O Canada often brings a tear to my eye—they are, for the most part, songs about terrible violence, and they’re often misogynist or racist or both. There have been efforts in recent years to rework the lyrics of the Canadian anthem to overcome these issues, and I’m a lot more in favour of doing so than I was before reading this book. A national anthem should not only inspire pride in our home country; it should also encourage us to be respectful of other nations.

At a time when there is so much violent conflict in the world, do we really need to be singing about war and killing? I think not. I think we need to spend a lot more time learning to be tolerant of each other’s differences and open to welcoming many perspectives on life. So today, on the International Day for Peace, maybe find five minutes to think about what you might do to contribute to peace in your life, perhaps starting with one of these fine books. 

MFA Alumni Book Highlights: From 50 to 80 Publications

/ Lynne Melcombe / Leave a comment

It’s been a while since I posted a rundown of books published by grads of the MFA in CNF program, and in that time the number has jumped from 50 to about 70—or 71, because I just added my own book to the list below.

I actually think the number is higher than that, maybe as high as 80, but I’m not sure everyone’s books are listed here. (I took this list from the UKing’s website.)

If your book(s)—either the one you started for your master’s degree or any you’ve published since then—aren’t listed here, please let me know and I will update the list.

(It’s great to see how many of us have gone on to write more books after that first one.)

Tamara Baluja (class of 2024) Nav Bhatia: The Heart of a Superfan, Penguin Random House Canada, 2024. Review to come. 

Niko Bell (class of 2023) Risk, Freedom, and the Future of Safe Sex, ECW Press, TBA.

Sheima Benembarek (class of 2020) Halal Sex: The Intimate Lives of Muslim Women in North America, Penguin Random House Canada, 2023.

Gloria Blizzard (class of 2021) Black Cake, Turtle Soup, and Other Dilemmas, Dundurn Press, 2024.

Alec Bruce (class of 2022) The Cooperators: The People Behind the Rebirth of a Nova Scotia Movement, Pottersfield Press, 2024.

S. Lesley Buxton (class of 2016) One Strong Girl: Surviving the Unimaginable—A Mother’s Memoir, Pottersfield Press, 2018.

Esmeralda Cabral (class of 2019) How to Clean a Fish and Other Adventures in Portugal, University of Alberta Press, 2023.

Michaela Cavanaugh (class of 2024) Present Tense: How We Reckon with the End of the World, McClelland & Stewart (Canada) and The New Press (US), 2027.

Marilyn Carr (class of 2020) Nowhere Like This Place: Tales from a Nuclear Childhood, Iguana Books, 2020. Review to come. 
How I Invented the Internet, Iguana Books, 2022.

Gregor Craigie (class of 2019) On Borrowed Time: Shaking Complacency in North America’s Seismic Zones, Goose Lane Editions, 2021.
Why Humans Build Up: The Rise of Towers, Temples, and Skyscrapers, Orca Publishing, 2022.
Radio Jet Lag, Cormorant Books, 2023.
Our Crumbling Foundation: How We Solve Canada’s Housing Crisis, Penguin Random House, 2024.

Pauline Dakin (class of 2015) Run, Hide, Repeat: A Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood, Penguin Random House, 2017.

Moira Dann (class of 2016) Craigdarroch Castle in 21 Treasures, Touchstone Editions, 2021.
Fat Camp Summer: Advice I Would Have Given My Parents, Sutherland House Books, 2025.

Deborah Dundas (class of 2023) On Class, Biblioasis, 2022.

Marsha Faubert (class of 2018) Wanda’s War: An Untold Story of Nazi Europe, Forced Labour, and a Canadian Immigration Scandal, Goose Lane Editions, 2023.

Amy Fish (class of 2023), One in Six Million: The Baby by the Roadside and the Man Who Retraced a Holocaust Survivor’s Lost Identity, Goose Lane Editions, 2025.

Catherine Fogarty (class of 2018) Murder on the Inside: The True Story of the Deadly Riot at Kingston Penitentiary, Biblioasis, 2021.
Someone You Know: An Unforgettable Collection of Canadian True Crime, HarperCollins, 2023.

Stacey May Fowles (class of 2015) The Girl in the Woods, McLelland and Stewart, 2018.
Baseball Life Advice: Loving the Game that Saved Me, Penguin Random House, 2017. 
Whatever Gets You Through: Twelve Survivors on Life After Sexual Assault, Greystone Books, 2019.
Good Mom on Paper: Writers on Creativity and Motherhood, Book*hug Press, 2022.

Joan Francuz (class of 2016) Press Enter to Continue: Scribes from Babylon to Silicon, 1920 House Press, 2018.

Kim Fraser (class of 2021) The Accidental Caregiver: Challenges and Triumphs of Intimate Family Caregivers, Sutherland House, 2022. Review to come. 

Maryanna Gabriel (class of 2022), On Earth as It Is: Walking the Camino, Pottersfield Press, 2023.

MJ Grant (class of 2016) A Cure for Heartache: Life’s Simple Pleasures, One Moment at a Time, Hodder, 2019.

Stephanie Griffiths (class of 2016) Sit Still and Prosper: How a Former Money Manager Discovered the Path to Investing with Greater Clarity, Calmness, and Confidence, Bird in the Sky Press, 2018. Review to come. 

Sue Harper (class of 2016), Winter in the City of Light: A Search for Self in Retirement, Amazon, 2019.

Suzanne Elki Yoko Hartmann (class of 2021) The Nail That Sticks Out: Reflections on the Postwar Japanese Canadian Community, Dundurn, 2024.

Virginia Heffernan (class of 2021) Ring of Fire: High-Stakes Mining in a Lowlands Wilderness, ECW Press, 2023.

Taslim Jaffer (class of 2022) with Omar Mouallem, Back Where I Came From: On Culture, Identity, and Home, Book*hug Press, 2024. Review to come. 

Kirk Angus Johnson (class of 2019) Some Kind of Hero: Love, Death, and Trauma in a Nova Scotia Town, Penguin Random House, TBA.

Kevin Kelloway (class of 2019) The Performance Equation, University of Toronto Press, TBA.

Kim Kierans (class of 2025) Journalism for the Public Good: The Michener Awards at Fifty, Bighorn Books, 2024. Review to come. 

Gwen Lamont (class of 2019) The View from Coffin Ridge: A Childhood Exhumed, Ginger Press, 2024.

Nellwyn Lampert (class of 2017) Every Boy I Ever Kissed: A Memoir, Dundurn Press, 2019.

Nellwyn Lampert with Pamela Oakley, Christian Smith, and Gillian Turnbull, eds., Bad Artist: Creating in a Productivity-Obsessed World, Touchwood, 2024.

Tyler LeBlanc (class of 2018) Acadian Driftwood: One Family and the Great Expulsion, Goose Lane Editions, 2020.

An artist's rendering of a river, mountains and trees in shades of grey, brown , and red, with the book title and author's name.

Lezlie Lowe (class of 2016) Nowhere to Go: How Public Toilets Fail Our Private Needs, Coach House Books, 2018.
The Volunteers: How Halifax Women Won the Second World War, Nimbus Publishing, 2022.

James MacDuff (class of 2024) with Mirriam Mweemba, The Illogical Adventure: A Memoir of Love and Fate, Pottersfield, 2025. Review to come.

Susan MacLeod (class of 2018) Dying for Attention: A Graphic Memoir about Nursing Home Care, Conundrum Press, 2021.

Leslie Marion (class of 2018) Easy Money: A Bankspeak Primer for Small Business, 4th Floor Press, 2020. Review to come. 

Jessica McDiarmid (class of 2016) Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, Penguin Random House, 2020.

Lori McKay (class of 2020) Searching for Mayflowers: The True Story of Canada’s First Quintuplets, Nimbus Publishing, 2024. Review to come. 

Lauren McKeon (class of 2016) F-Bomb: Dispatches from the War on Feminism, Goose Lane Editions, 2017.
No More Nice Girls: Gender, Power, and Why It’s Time to Stop Playing by the Rules, House of Anansi, 2020.
Women of the Pandemic: Stories from the Frontlines of COVID-19, Penguin Random House, 2021.

Lynne Melcombe (class of 2015) No Such Thing: A True Story of “Mild” Traumatic Brain Injury and My Twenty-Year (so far) Recovery, Iguana Books, 2026. 

Helena Moncrieff (class of 2016) The Fruitful City: Building Communities Around Nature’s Bounty, ECW Press, 2018.

Chris Moore (class of 2024) The Power of Guilt: Why We Feel It and Its Surprising Ability to Heal, HarperCollins (Canada), BenBella (US), August Books (UK), 2025.

Philip Moscovitch (class of 2019) Adventures in Bubbles and Brine: What I Learned from Nova Scotia’s Masters of Fermented Foods—Craft Beer, Cider, Cheese, Sauerkraut and More, Formac Publishing, 2019. Review to come. 

Jason Murray (class of 2016) A Distorted Revolution: How Eric’s Trip Changed Music, Moncton and Me, Nimbus Publishing, 2017. Review to come. 

Jesse O’Reilly-Conlin (class of 2019) Visiting Africa: A Memoir, Demeter Press, 2021. Go: A Memoir of Movement, Iguana Books, 2023. 

Robin Pacific (class of 2021) Skater Girl: An Archaeology of the Self, Guernica Editions, 2024. Review to come. 

A microphone and cords on a white tabletop.

David Pate (class of 2023) The Worst Songs in the World: The Terrible Truth about National Anthems, Dundurn Press, 2024.

Renée Pellerin (class of 2016) Conspiracy of Hope: The Truth About Breast Cancer Screening, Goose Lane Editions, 2018.

Jen Powley (class of 2015) Just Jen: Thriving Through Multiple Sclerosis, Fernwood Publishing, 2017.
Making a Home: Assisted Living in the Community for Young Disabled People, Fernwood Publishing, 2023.

Laura Pratt (class of 2020) Heartbroken: Field Notes on a Constant Condition, Random House Canada, 2023.

Adelle Purdham (class of 2022) I Don’t Do Disability and Other Lies I’ve Told Myself, Dundurn Press, 2024.

Andrew Reeves (class of 2016) Overrun: Dispatches from the Asian Carp Crisis, ECW Press, 2019.

Bonny Reichert (class of 2022) How to Share an Egg: A True Story of Hunger, Love and Plenty, Appetite/Penguin Random House (Canada), and Ballantine/Random House (US), 2024.

Dylan Reid (class of 2021) Messy Cities: Why We Can’t Plan Everything, Coach House Books, 2025. Review to come. 

Jo-Ann Roberts (class of 2023) Storm the Ballot Box: An Insider’s Guide to a Voting Revolution, Nimbus Publishing, 2025.

Jason Schreurs (class of 2022) Scream Therapy: A Punk Journey through Mental Health, Flex Your Head Press, 2023.

RC Shaw (class of 2017) Louisbourg or Bust: A Surfer’s Wild Ride Down Nova Scotia’s Drowned Coast, Pottersfield Press, 2018.
Captain Solitude: One Surfer’s Search for the World’s Greatest Sailor, Goose Lane Editions, 2024.

Sharron J. Simpson (class of 2021) The Kelowna Story: An Okanagan History, 2nd Edition, Harbour Publishing, 2025.

Christian Smith (class of 2017) The Scientist and the Psychic: A Son’s Exploration of His Mother’s Gift, Random House, 2021.

Suzanne Stewart (class of 2016) The Tides of Time: A Nova Scotia Book of Seasons, Pottersfield Press, 2018.

Karen Stiller (class of 2018) The Minister’s Wife: A Memoir of Faith, Doubt, Loneliness, Forgiveness and More, Tynedale House, 2019.
Holiness Here: Searching for God in the Ordinary Events of Everyday Life, NavPress, 2024.

William Sullivan (class of 2017) The City and the Smelter: How Against All Odds Did It Happen, First Choice Books, 2023. Review to come. 

Jon Tattrie (class of 2020) Peace by Chocolate: The Hadhad Family’s Remarkable Journey from Syria to Canada, Goose Lane Editions, 2020.

Gillian Turnbull (class of 2017) Sonic Booms: Making Music in an Oil Town, Eternal Cavalier Press, 2019. Review to come.

Jennifer Thornhill Verma (class of 2019) Cod Collapse: The Rise and Fall of Newfoundland’s Saltwater Cowboy, Nimbus Publishing, 2019.

Aaron Williams (class of 2017) Chasing Smoke: A Wildfire Memoir, Harbour Publishing, 2017.
The Last Logging Show: A Forestry Family at the End of an Era, Harbour Publishing, 2024.

Jennifer Robin Wilson (class of 2025) The Heart of Homestay: Creating Meaningful Connections When Hosting International Students, Page Two Books, 2025.

Gina Leola Woolsey (class of 2015) Fifteen Thousand Pieces: A Medical Examiner’s Journey through Disaster, Guernica Editions, 2023.

Remember, if you’re an MFA in CNF grad and you have a CNF book that’s not shown here, let me know and I’ll update this list in a future post.

Must-Read Nonfiction Books for Labour Day

/ Lynne Melcombe / Leave a comment

It’s Labour Day, a stat holiday for most of us, but one that few of us ever ponder the meaning of. As its name suggests, Labour Day originated as a day to honour the hard work and rights of society’s ordinary workers. This Labour Day, I thought I’d take a thematic look at books produced through the labour MFA CNF grads that pertain to labour. That said, I’ve taken a broad lens on labour that touches on diverse aspects of the way work, or the lack of it, impacts the lives of ordinary workers and their families.

A close-up of the grey-blue waves of The Atlantic Ocean on the cover of The Cooperators by Alec Bruce.

First up, Alec Bruce’s (class of 2022) The Cooperators: The Rebirth of a Nova Scotia Movement 1949-2024 (Pottersfield Press, 2024). Over the years, I’ve been involved in many cooperatives. I bank at a credit union; driven cooperatively owned cars; bought outdoor sporting goods at Mountain Equipment Co-op; and shopped for natural and organic foods for my family at a cooperatively owned grocery store.

This book honours the role of cooperatives in improving quality of life for everyday people. This is a meticulously researched book that covers the storied history of the cooperative movement in Nova Scotia beginning with its founding father, Father Moses Michael Cody. After a lull during the war years, new advocates emerged to carry the flag of the cooperative movement in Nova Scotia through a period of rebuilding to the success it’s enjoying today. Moreover, this history is interesting for anyone who’s ever used a co-op, even if they don’t live in Nova Scotia. 

In contrast, Deborah Dundas’s (class of 2023) slim volume On Class (Biblioasis 2023) looks less closely at labour than the lack of it. From a deeply personal perspective, she examines impacts of chronic un/der-employment that too many of us are quick to blame on those who are suffering. In most cases, it’s not the fault of individuals but an integral aspect of the free-market theory of capitalism. While many of us decry the injustice that has people living on the street, struggling for food, many fewer of us realize that this actually requires the existence of an economic underclass. In starkly poignant prose, Dundas describes how this theory works out in reality. Her book makes it easy for readers to see that the affluence of a few in our society rides on the backs of a much larger group of people with significantly less wealth. While most of those people are middle class and doing okay, some of them are inevitably doing much less than okay, living in tents, begging for coins at traffic lights, and scrounging food from garbage bins. As I write in my review:

The words Deborah Dundas On Class alongside a photo of worn work boots.

[T]he kind of poverty Dundas describes [is] the kind where you own only two sets of clothes and one of them is always dirty, where you can’t afford shampoo so you wash your hair with dish soap, where it’s not that you hope dinner won’t be hamburger again but that you’ll have dinner. That kind of poverty leaves its imprint well into adult life, when it reminds you over and over that you’re not worthy and you shouldn’t expect much out of life. Only a few, like Dundas, climb out of that deeply entrenched poverty, a climb that’s as much psychological as financial in that it has much less to do with pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps than believing one is just as deserving of boots as anyone else.

The Nordic countries constantly show the rest of the world that there is something better than a system that depends on the misery of a considerable percentage to sustain the financial hoarding disorders of a select few. Dundas captures the unquantifiable impacts of this economic injustice and backs it up with hard, deeply disturbing facts. 

A vividly coloured painting of a red house on the shore of a blue sea teeming with fish, with a fishing boat off shore.

Unemployment is also a theme in Cod Collapse: The Rise and Fall of Newfoundland’s Saltwater Cowboys (Nimbus Publishing, 2019) by Jenn Thornhill Verma (class of 2019). Verma braids memoir with history in describing what life was like on “The Rock” for centuries before 1992. That was when the tragic overfishing of cod off Newfoundland’s Grand Banks resulted in a moratorium that put 30,000 cod fishers out of work overnight. Cod fishing had sustained thousands of families for a few centuries before the province’s labourers were plunged into an unprecedented level of poverty. And that’s saying something about a place where the grinding life of work at sea sustained whole families in one-room cabins without plumbing or central heating for many decades.

Yet many people loved that life as much as they love the rugged beauty of their island home, a place where jagged cliffs drop straight down to water so cold it can kill a human in minutes, a place where spring and summer are enlivened by whales spouting, puffins nesting, and icebergs floating by. Grounded in historical research brought to life by vivid, personal memories, Cod Collapse is a powerful read about what happens when the population of an entire island is forced change the way it works and lives overnight.  

A photograph of individual flowers and leaves arrayed against a white background with the title The Times of Time A Nova Scotia Book of Seasons and the author's name, Suzanne Stewart, in a font with a quaint, old-timey feel.

The Tides of Time: A Nova Scotia Book of Seasons (Pottersfield Press, 2018) by Suzanne Stewart (class of 2016) allows us to finish our review on a more optimistic note. Stewart take an imaginative look at the labour that sustains us—the work of food production. Dividing her book into four parts, one for each season, she focuses each month on the characteristics of that season, like fall colours in October and the heat of summer in July. Then, for each month, she visits and interviews one of the people whose work produces wholesome, natural, delicious food that reaches peak production at that time of year.

A professor of Romantic literature at St. FX, Stewart punctuates her lyric essays with quotes from Keats, Wordsworth (both William and Dorothy), and Thoreau. The result, to me, is a soothing read, a story to take in while curled up in a rocking chair by a fire on a fall evening or sipping an espresso on a patio on a Sunday morning. There is no labour in getting through these chapters, no rush to meet a deadline. The Tides of Time is just a leisurely stroll through the seasons while celebrating the unsung heroes of all our lives, the labourers who literally “give us our daily bread.” And that, after all, is what Labour Day is about.

These books look at labour from many dimensions, helping us understand and appreciate the ordinary people who make our lives possible, and often delightful. Take some time this Labour Day to consider which of these books, or many others, you might read to gain a better appreciation of the labourers we celebrate today, including those authors who have laboured so hard to produce these wonderful and informative examples of creative nonfiction writing.

The Power of Cooperatives: Alec Bruce’s Insights into the Cooperative Movement in Nova Scotia

/ Lynne Melcombe / 1 Comment

I’ve done my banking at a credit union since the late 1980s. I used to belong to Modo, a cooperative carsharing enterprise. I’ve found some of the best prices on organic produce at a cooperative grocery store. Many friends live in cooperative housing, an option I might pursue as I get older. 

Book cover titled 'The Co-operators: Rebirth of a Nova Scotia Movement 1949-2024' by Alec Bruce, featuring a background of ocean waves.

I believe in the power of cooperative ventures. So, when I saw the title of Alec Bruce’s (class of 2022) book, The Cooperators: The People Behind the Rebirth of a Nova Scotia Movement 1949–2024, it tweaked my interest. 

Corporate histories are generally commissioned by the companies whose histories they recount and are meant to be read by people who have an interest in that company. Like any other corporate history, Bruce’s book was commissioned (by the Cooperative Council of Nova Scotia). But a book about a cooperative movement is inherently different because cooperatives are inherently different.

The history of any cooperative venture is more than the story of an individual’s rise from rags to riches because it’s the history of a philosophy made manifest. Cooperatives came into being out of a belief that when people who are underserved by conventional institutions come together with purpose, their joint venture can not only serve them but others like them—people who are not wealthy and generally have no desire to be, people who just want fair shake in a world that often ignores them. 

When I look briefly at other cooperative histories, I see similar things: many of them started in the early 1900s, were driven by the efforts of a passionate few, may have gone through a period of decline, but have come back to life in the last few decades and are defying the belief that business can only be successful if it lacks heart and human interest. 

As Father Moses Michael Coady, the father of Nova Scotia’s cooperative movement, said, 

“It has been said that credit supports the borrower the way a rope supports the hanged. Many an unfortunate debtor has found this to be true. One of the chief arguments that proponents of private business advance against the co-operative system is that they give credit while the co-operative does not. They feel that after they have ‘carried’ so many people for such a long time, it is ungrateful of the people to seek to establish their own business.”

Poppycock, he said. It’s not ungrateful to want to house, feed, and clothe your family on your own terms. As beauty is in the eye of the beholder, credit is in the eye of the lender. If the lender is of sound moral character, invested both in his own and his community’s welfare, there’s nothing wrong with it. A credit union, he said, is perfectly designed to help people get out of the messes private businesses had put them in.

This has been my experience of all types of cooperatives: credit unions (the one I use in Vancouver and the one my brother uses in Toronto), cooperative associations that deliver weekly bins of organic produce at reasonable prices, cooperative housing for people who need housing security but can’t buy a house. 

The place for cooperatives in our society these days, where costs seem to be perpetually spiralling out of control, is almost limitless. I’ve patronized many cooperatively run worker -owned businesses, which give workers a real sense of investment in where they make their living. I’ve read about the power of cooperative structures lifting people in the majority world (a term I prefer to more value-laden terms like “third world” and “developing world) out of what seemed like hopeless poverty.

To me, this has always seemed like a brilliant idea, and Alec Bruce has done an admirable job of sharing the history of Nova Scotia’s cooperative movement in a way that can benefit anyone with an interest in exploring the coop philosophy—and maybe starting a coop of their own. 

For more Canadian history, check out:

Craigdarroch Castle in 21 Treasures, by Moira Dann

Murder on the Inside: The True Story of the Deadly Riot at Kingston Penitentiary, by Catherine Fogarty

Acadian Driftwood: One Family and the Great Expulsion, by Tyler LeBlanc

Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, by Jessica McDiarmid

Cod Collapse: The Rise and Fall of Newfoundland’s Saltwater Cowboys, by Jenn Thornhill Verma

Fifteen Thousand Pieces: A Medical Examiner’s Journey through Disaster, by Gina Leola Woolsey

Best Canadian Reads for Earth Day 2023

/ Lynne Melcombe / Leave a comment

April 22 is Earth Day. Here are some great books about the environment by Canadian authors to commit to reading.

Cover of 'Chasing Smoke: A Wildfire Memoir' by Aaron Williams featuring a wildfire scene with smoke and flames among tall trees against an orange sky.

I live in the Pacific Northwest, where two things are ever-present on people’s minds: how bad the wildfires will be this summer and when the next big earthquake will hit. Although Aaron Williams (class of 2017) wrote Chasing Smoke: A Wildfire Memoir (Harbour Publishing, 2017) as a memoir of one summer (of many) on a firefighting crew in the dense forests of British Columbia, it wouldn’t be possible to write such a memoir without touching on the impacts of a warming planet on creating the conditions that are making wildfires worse every year (2023 was Canada’s worst season on record). From hectares of dry brush where forests were clearcut to fire seasons that begin earlier and end later each year, Chasing Smoke not only describes a wildfire fighter’s lifestyle but a problem that must be addressed if we don’t wish to see our planet go up in flames.  

Book cover of 'On Borrowed Time' by Gregor Craigie featuring an urban skyline with yellow seismic wave graphics, emphasizing themes of earthquake preparedness.

One might not think climate change influences earthquakes, and that’s not where Gregor Craigie (class of 2019) focuses his attention in On Borrowed Time: North America’s Next Big Quake (Goose Lane Editions, 2021). But science acknowledges that as hurricanes, floods, and wildfires increase in frequency and severity, so too does global warming contribute to the frequency and severity of earthquakes. “As a result of the man-made global warming, the melting of land ice, mainly in Antarctica and Greenland, occurs in an accelerating process and sea levels are rising worldwide” as are increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. “Both phenomena also have an impact on earthquake risk since they lead to a small but notable increase in pressure on tectonic faults in the subsurface due to hydrostatic load….” And “sea-level fluctuations of just a few decimetres are enough to trigger earthquakes.” (https://www.gfz.de/en/press/news/details/mehr-erdbeben-durch-menschengemachten-klimawandel) Reading Craigie’s deeply researched book provides frightening insight into what can happen when the next Big One hits. 

Cover of the book 'Overrun: Dispatches from the Asian Carp Crisis' by Andrew Reeves, featuring illustrations of various fish on a light blue background.

In Overrun: Dispatches from the Asian Carp Crisis (ECW, 2019) Andrew Reeves (class of 2016), an award-winning environmental journalist, tackles the eponymous environmental crisis head on. When I began reading Overrun, I’d never heard of Asian crap, much less the crisis they’ve caused. But as I read Reeves’ entertaining account of how, with all good intentions, this voracious and prolific fish was introduced to control invasive water weeds in aquaculture farms in the southern US, I became increasingly aware of just how dangerous it can be to import any species of life to any part of the world where it lacks natural predators. From a few fish in the 1950s, several species of Asian carp have taken over river systems from the mouth of the Mississippi River watershed north to where they’re a handful of miles now threatening the ecology of the entire Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River system. This is what happens when humans, with all the best intentions, believe they can improve on billions of years of evolution and try to take nature into their own hands. 

Of the books I’ve reviewed to date, these three are the ones I’d recommend most highly as Earth Day reading. But they’re not the only ones to touch on environmental themes, even though the environment is not the main thrust of the book. I also highly recommend Ring of Fire: High-Stakes Mining in a Lowlands Wilderness (ECW, 2023) by Virginia Heffernan, which advocates for a different approach to resource extraction, one that is more environmentally safe and concerned with the welfare of Indigenous Peoples. The Fruitful City: The Enduring Power of the Urban Food Forest (ECW, 2018) by Helena Moncrieff (class of 2016) focuses predominantly on community sharing of the harvest of fruit trees within any city, but in so doing it also speaks to feed the human population by stopping our environmentally stupid wasting of nature’s bounty just because it sits on privately owned land.

Cover of the book 'The Fruitful City' by Helena Moncrieff, featuring colorful leaf illustrations and a subtitle about the urban food forest.

While Jenn Thornhill Verma’s (class of 2019) Cod Collapse: The Rise and Fall of Newfoundland’s Saltwater Cowboys (Nimbus Publishing, 2019) is a memoir of a family’s lost way of life, one that had endured for generations in many families, it’s also a tale of the consequences of overfishing, not only to the environment but to those who depend on the sea for their living. And for those of us currently living in the Pacific Northwest, it’s a cautionary tale about the way deal with dwindling salmon populations. And finally, The Tides of Time: A Nova Scotia Book of Seasons (Pottersfield Press, 2019) by Suzanne Stewart (class of 2016) is more directly about the link between different people’s food-producing labour with a particular month, it’s also a compelling series of essays about how people can and do choose to live in harmony with the seasons. And it’s hard to imagine anything more environmentally advantageous than that. 

Essential Feminist Reads for International Women’s Month

/ Lynne Melcombe / Leave a comment

March 8 was International Women’s Day, and the month of March is International Women’s Month. With a nod to both, with this post I acknowledge several books from the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction program that further the cause of justice and equality for women. 

Cover of the book 'Halal Sex: The Intimate Lives of Muslim Women in North America' by Sheima Benembarek, featuring ripe figs and a 'Staff Pick' label.

It’s hard to pick just a few books. The program is dominated by women, all of whom I’d describe as feminist, and many of their stories are about women’s lives, whether their own or others. But if I’m going to stick strictly to books with a decidedly feminist theme, I’d choose these five:

Halal Sex: The Intimate Lives of Muslim Women in North America by Sheima Benembarek. This book was eye-opening for me. It honestly never occurred to me that a blue-haired, niqab-wearing, orthodox Muslim woman might be polyamorous. It doesn’t surprise me that a child from a Muslim family might be just as likely as a child from any other family to be transgender. But I have to admit some surprise—the good kind—in reading about a same-sex couple, both comedians, one a Palestinian-born Muslim the other a Jew from Montreal who perform individually and as a pair who starred in a Crave comedy special called Marriage of Convenience. The title of the book, Halal Sex, comes from a term for sex practiced within a heterosexual Muslim marriage. But Benembarek put a decidedly feminist twist on it by redefining it as “all consensual sex between adults.” 

Book cover featuring the title 'Every Boy I Ever Kissed' by Nellwyn Lampert, with a graphic design showing a woman in a red dress and hands embracing her.

Every Boy I Ever Kissed: A Memoir by Nellwyn Lampert. I started calling myself a feminist at the age of 13. I was in way too much of a hurry to lose my virginity, which I did at 14. I had no idea of the connection between the two. But there is a connection, a pretty important one. And that connection is a major part of what Lampert wrestles with in this coming-of-age memoir. As the cover blurb says, “for Nellwyn Lampert, losing her virginity would turn out to be anything but simple. Her chosen partners struggled with porn-induced erectile dysfunction and other crises of masculinity. And in the bedroom, nothing went according to plan.” So, in that regard, our experiences were entirely different. But in terms of “the realities of sexual liberation, female empowerment, and masculinity,” the issues are not that different at all than the ones I was too young to realize I was doing with more than 50 years ago that sexual freedom and gender freedom are two very different concepts. 

Cover of the book 'Highway of Tears' by Jessica McDiarmid, featuring an illustrated mask and a striking orange background. The subtitle highlights themes of racism and justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls by Jessica McDiarmid. It’s a grim fact that Indigenous women make up only about 4% of the female population in Canada but accounted for 16% of all female homicides between 1980 and 2012. And a disturbing number of those women are abducted, raped, and murdered along a strip of highway in northern BC called the Highway of Tears. From the back cover: “Journalist Jessica McDiarmid investigates the devastating effect these tragedies have had on the families of the victims and their communities, and how systemic racism and indifference have created a climate where Indigenous women and girls are over-policed, yet under-protected.” As difficult as this book was to read, it was just as difficult to put down. I can’t imagine a better lens through which to examine the intersection of racism and misogyny than through the horrific impacts of colonization by patriarchal white, European culture on Indigenous women and girls. 

Book cover of 'F Bomb: Dispatches from the War on Feminism' by Lauren McKeon featuring bold black text and a pink graffiti-style accent.

F Bomb: Dispatches from the War on Feminism by Lauren McKeon. It’s always surprised me that when I say I’ve been calling myself a feminist since I was 13 but I haven’t always felt that feminism welcomed me, what many people seem to hear is that I don’t think feminism is necessary or relevant. In fact, I’m saying exactly the opposite—that feminism remains as relevant today as ever and that’s why it’s so important to ensure that ALL sorts of women feel a sense of belonging within the movement. That was my read on McKeon’s book. She recognizes that too many women have moved in the wrong direction instead of understanding that feminism is for every woman—that, indeed, until we are all free, none of us are free. Why has this happened? That, as McKeon points out, is a question for feminists to answer. And as women’s rights are being eroded daily, it’s becoming increasingly urgent that we answer it and ensure that all women feel that the arms of feminism welcome them. 

Book cover for 'Conspiracy of Hope' by Renée Pellerin, featuring stylized illustrations of a woman's chest with highlighted areas, and subtitle 'The Truth About Breast Cancer Screening'.

Conspiracy of Hope: The Truth About Breast Cancer Screening by Renée Pellerin. No woman in the western world isn’t familiar with the unique joy (she said sarcastically) of having her breasts pulled and twisted and squished between cold metal plates for their regular mammogram. In this book, Pellerin, an award-winning producer with the CBC, does a deep dive into the evidence supporting and opposing regular mammography screening. And her conclusion is that the evidence weighs strongly in favour of less screening. It’s supported by vested interests, false positives can lead to invasive overtreatment, false negatives can give women a false sense of security, its effectiveness differs significantly for different age groups, and regular exposure to radiation can, in a small number of cases, increase risk of cancer. It’s an eye-opening book that every woman should read and consider carefully before assuming that doctor’s orders should never be questioned. 

Happy International Women’s Month and enjoy the reading!

No Such Thing: A Memoir of ‘Mild’ TBI and How You Can Help

/ Lynne Melcombe / Leave a comment

Almost every week for more than a year, I’ve been using this space to review and champion books by graduates of the prestigious Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Nonfiction at University of King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Book cover of 'No Such Thing' by Lynne Melcombe, featuring a blue background and white text.
To read excerpts, click on the image.

I’ve been mostly absent for a couple of months, first because I was on a much-needed vacation, and since then because I’ve been devoting my time to a book project of my own.

I undertook the MFA program so I could learn to write, not just any book, but this book.

This book recounts my experience of and research related to a “mild” TBI (concussion) that I had over 20 years ago and from which I’ve never fully recovered.

My experience taught me that there is “no such thing” as a “mild” traumatic brain injury. That’s why I’ve called my book No Such Thing: A True Story of “mild” Traumatic Brain Injury and My Twenty-Year (so far) Recovery.

Most people recover from concussions in a few days—weeks at most.

But up to 30% of people don’t. Some go on having symptoms for months, even years. 

I’ve never fully recovered from my injury. I felt a need to write a book about it for a few reasons.

  • Brain injury is very isolating. The injury itself—pain, brain fog, memory loss—can make it hard to communicate. 
  • Many people—doctors, lawyers, co-workers, friends, family—don’t believe you. That makes the pain and isolation worse. 
  • The stigma against people who pursue legal measures based on ongoing misperceptions about brain injury add stress and emotional trauma that complicate a person’s ability to recover.
  • There wasn’t much to support people going through this experience twenty years ago. Anyone going through it now deserves better.

At the time of my injury, I often felt like I was going crazy.

Doctors kept telling me I should be better. Lawyers put my life under a microscope. Family, friends, and coworkers acted—and sometimes said—I was just looking for attention and I needed to get over it.

But as years went by and social media exploded, I began hearing other people’s stories of not-so-mild traumatic brain injury. I began keeping abreast of current research that supported what they were going through.

Gradually, I stopped questioning my own perceptions.

When I wrote my book, I was writing the book I needed at the time. 

I wrote it for the people who need it now, for those who love them, and for those who want to better understand this underestimated injury.

I finished my book a couple of years ago and, full of hope, I started looking for a publisher.

Every one of them responded the same way: timely topic, great story, well written, but I lacked enough of an audience to justify their investment in publishing it.

One of the things I learned in the MFA program was the necessity of building an audience while writing my book.

But while I was writing, I was coping with a divorce, navigating health issues, and rebuilding a freelance writing and editing business.

I was also managing the symptoms of my injury every day.

I lacked the ability to do it all.

At first, when I realized that no “real” publishers wanted my book, I felt like I’d failed.  

But I also realized that if I gave up and left my book sitting in a virtual drawer, that would feel like failure too.

So, I turned to Iguana Books.

Iguana Books is a hybrid publisher.

A hybrid publisher retains the quality controls conventional publishers rely on but with a requirement that authors cover production costs, as they would in self-publishing. 

Iguana takes hybrid publishing a step further by asking their authors to crowdfund production costs. This ensures costs are covered and allows authors to test the market and build an audience for their book.

Iguana recommended Kickstarter, a crowdfunding platform designed specifically for creators.

As I started building my Kickstarter campaign, an interesting thing happened.

I stopped feeling like I’d failed.

I realized that no matter how I publish my book, it will succeed based on same things as any other book—my research, my writing, and my promotional efforts.

That realization has renewed my confidence in my abilities, injected my efforts with energy, and restored my faith in the book I’ve written.

That’s where you come in.

I need your support to raise the $9,000 required to fund the production process—copy editing, layout, distribution. And I’m asking you to pledge whatever you can to help me get there. 

Please go to my Kickstarter campaign page and learn more about why I feel my book is timely, important, and necessary.

Then consider backing my project with a pledge in any amount you can manage.

What’s in it for you?

If you pledge $10 or more, you’ll receive a reward tailored to the size of your contribution—an e-book, a signed paperback with No Such Thing bookmarks, or a book club special for buying in bulk.

If you pledge less than $10—even only $1—I’ll give you a shout-out on social media and add your name to the acknowledgements in my book. 

If I don’t reach my $9,000 goal by March 15, my campaign will end and Kickstarter won’t collect any pledges. 

You have nothing to lose. 

What should you do next?

Well, you can click away to another page, if you want.

Or you can go to my campaign page, read more about my book, and consider making a pledge.

If you think my project is worth backing, click the button for a reminder when my campaign goes live on February 16. Then, if you still feel so inclined, pledge whatever you feel is right. 

If you change your mind before my campaign ends, you can change or withdraw your pledge. No questions, no obligations.

All I ask is that you think about it.

With gratitude,
Lynne