writings
cultivating story:
for the love of words and pictures and true stories
As artists and their artworks co-inhere, as writers and their writings span the thresholds of seeing and saying, so do I wholly embrace the liminal journey of cultivating story.
Here lives the beating heart of my lifelong passion for bringing words and pictures and true stories together.
CULTIVATING STORY
words and pictures ...
Throughout my childhood, I gazed over the shoulder of my artist-magician father as he hand-lettered and illustrated over 1500 pages of Rice's Encyclopedia of Silk Magic with pen nib, India ink, and card stock.
But as a teenager living in a difficult household, I was denied my own library card. Dismissing the 'sunny-book farm' novels at school and refusing my mother's leather-bound classics at home, I preferred instead two forbidden magazines: True Story and True Confessions.
Even if their short stories were tall tales—though I believed them to be true—they conveyed vital life lessons to this troubled girl. Hungry for the real and the fair, I snipped dramatic headlines from those taboo magazines and taped them to the pages of my teenage diaries, giving voice to my own hopes and heartaches.
And I delved into our household volumes of the World Book Encyclopedia, scrolling the indexes of history and pouring over the pages and columns of words and pictures.
and true stories
Many years ago, I met a woman who was en route from being a journalist in New York to being a novelist in Vermont. "How does a journalist on Friday become a novelist on Monday?" I enquired. "Well," she offered, "as a journalist I had to report the facts, but as a novelist I get to tell the truth."
Facts and truths may, of course, unwind and intertwine, and elements of fiction and non-fiction may well cross paths. As a reader and a writer, I favour the smack and sizzle of a gut-punch of a true story written in literary style. This creative non-fiction form differs from non-fiction per se when memoirists, for example, engage the tools and devices of fiction to tell our true stories. And pictures of people, places, and things, please!
“Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it.” —Gabriel García Márquez, Living to Tell the Tale, 2003.
“The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink.” —T.S. Eliot (1888–1965).
PUBLISHED WORKS & PUBLIC READNGS (and a memoir in revision)
words ...
academic papers
“The Risky Business of Translating Resiliency Research into Advocacy Practice.” The Newsletter of the BC Institute Against Family Violence, 7(3), 18–21. Winter 2001.
“The Risky Business of Translating Resiliency Research into Advocacy Practice.” FOCUS on Children and Youth, 5(1), 9–12. 2000.
“Toward Participatory Pedagogy: From Targeting Childhood Risk and Resilience to Teaching Children’s Rights and Responsibilities.” In J. R. Epp (Ed.), Centering on the Margins: The Evaded Curriculum. The Canadian Association for the Study of Women and Education (CASWE), International Institute Proceedings, Vol. 73–80. Ottawa, ON: University of Ottawa. 1998.
“Reconstructing Childhood: Toward a Praxis of Inclusion.” In A. McGillivray (Ed.), Governing Childhood (pp. 225–49). Aldershot ENG: Dartmouth. 1997.
Review of "Interrogating Incest: Feminism, Foucault and the Law." Canadian Journal of Law and Society, 11, 295–99. Spring, 1996.
“Dangerous Liaison: The Eugenics Movement and the Educational State.” In J. R. Epp, & A. M. Watkinson (Eds.), Systemic Violence: How Schools Hurt Children (pp. 27–49). London UK: The Falmer Press. 1996.
“Corporal Punishment in the Family: A Review of Psychology, Sociology, and Women’s Studies Abstracts.” The Ontario Institute for the Prevention of Child Abuse. 1992.
doctoral dissertation
Rewriting Resilience: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Childhood Resilience and the Politics of Teaching Resilience to 'Kids at Risk.' (UBC, 1999). Sheila Martineau, Copyright 1999.
Abstract and Dissertation available at UBC Library Open Collections: Rewriting Resilience.
and pictures ...
creative non-fiction essays
"The Nature of Silk Creation | The Creation of Silk Culture." La Vie en Soie II. Joanna Staniszkis, Textile Art Exhibit Catalogue. Provence, France: Dora Maar Foundation, L’hôtel de Tingry, Ménerbes. 2022.
"The Creative Spirit." Patricia Gray: Pastels. Vancouver BC: Patricia Gray Inc., 5–9. 2016.
“The Dark Path of the Fairy Tale Forest: Journeying Deep into Lesley Richmond’s Tree Series.” Surface Design Journal, 36(1), 12–15. 2011.
“From Alchemy to Art: Les Éditions Lucie Lambert.” The wisdom of the imagination: The livres d’artiste of Lucie Lambert. Vancouver BC: Artistory®, 1–27. 2010. View flipbook.
“The Fruit of the Creative Spirit is the Work of Art Itself.” Portfolio Collection: Lesley Richmond. (Vol. 40, M. Koumis, Ed.). London UK: Telos Art Publishing, 13–28. 2007.
“The Secret Life of Cocoons: The Silk Project of Textile Artist Joanna Staniszkis.” NUVO Magazine, 9, 89–91. 2006. View my separate flipbook (same essay, with additional texts and images and different layout, created as a gift to Joanna).
“MetalMorphosis: Worlds Within Worlds with Joanna Staniszkis.” Surface Design Journal, 29(4), 24–9. 2005.
“Les Éditions Lucie Lambert: Livres d’artiste and the Wisdom of the Imagination.” Amphora, 139, 6–19. 2005. (Design/reprint, illustrated, Artistory, 1–22. 2007.)
commissioned biographies
Jonathan Losee: Landscape Architecture. (Web Content). A career retrospective commissioned by Prospect & Refuse Landscape Architects Ltd., Vancouver BC. Jonathan Losee, Copyright 2019.
Finding A Good Fit: The Life and Work of Architect Rand Iredale. Vancouver BC: Granville Island Publishing. Co-authored with Kathryn Iredale, Copyright 2008.
HotMail: Notes from Abroad. "As dispatched to family and friends during my world tour." Charlotte Murray, Architect, Copyright 2004.
and true stories
personal essays
"In the Dying Room" (2022). Writers' Union of Canada annual short non-fiction prose competition. [one of 12 juried finalists out of 482 submissions]
Note from a juror: "Gripping, with evocative details that also conjure up a sense of rawness and the willingness to look on terrible things. The care the voice employs indicates a speaker who is finally coming to face what's unbearable, and the story brings the reader on this courageous journey.”
"In the Light of Day" (2022). [Companion essay to "In the Dying Room"]
"A Beautiful Beast." In D. Elza (Ed.), Emerge 14: The Writers Studio Anthology. Vancouver BC: Simon Fraser University, 84–89. 2014.
my literary memoir (in revision)
a memoir of magic, music, & madness. In revision to the beat of "The thing you are most afraid to write. Write that." —Nayyirah Waheed.
public readings
"Franny & Sparky: A True Story." Recorded for the Belight Series, Writers Radio, 2023.
"Smoke and Mirrors." Recorded for Writers Radio, 2022.
"Smoke and Mirrors." The Writers' Studio, SFU. Cottage Bistro, 2017.
"Dick Tracy: A True Story." The Writers' Studio, SFU. Cottage Bistro, 2016.
"The Master Plan." Vancouver Manuscript Intensive. Havana Café Theatre, 2015.
"The Assemblages." The Writers' Studio, SFU. Cottage Bistro, 2014.
personal booklets
The Boys: Peter and Paul Martineau. Self-published, Copyright 2021. The antics and accomplishments of my deceased twin brothers while they were growing up together (from 1948 to 1967). View flipbook.
The Vignettes: Staying Home Alone with Maxine. Self-published, Copyright 2020. My series of vignettes composed and photographed during the 2020 Covid lockdown in BC. View flipbook.