STORY EXCERPTS

From Rhythm. Commonwealth Broadcasting Association Short Story Competition Prize for Canada and Europe.

The boy's toes tapped against the stone floor under the wooden bench whenever the choir sang loud enough to mask the sound. If he timed it right, he could get in at least ten satisfying taps between the last Agnus Dei and dona nobis pacem. From the knees up he was solemn, but under the pew he was dancing, tapping out a beat...

From the 2022 novel, At Half-Light: A Story of Tango and Memory.

Sunday evening in Buenos Aires, 1936. You stroll through the crowd along Corrientes Street, carried by the human tide towards the moon behind the Obelisk. In balconies hang baskets of malvón, the flowers red as burning coals. At number 348, you push the door open and take the elevator to the second floor. The night slides open. Inside, where it’s always evening, you breathe in the heady mix of comfort and danger. Voices – in Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and other languages you don’t recognize. The porteño words for woman – not mujer, but mina, pebeta, percanta – with no rolling consonants to soften their edges. Black lacquer and burgundy, a fringed lamp on a table draped with velvet, a piano, and from the phonograph, the wail of the bandoneón.

From Home. British Columbia Southwest Regional Arts Council Prize.

...My home is built from strands of memory and chunks of time, held together with a mortar distilled and mixed in places where only I can go. It is a ribbon of memory that weaves its way through dreams and ripples through the rooms. It is built on generations of blood and bone..."

...And now my home sings with Gardel, Troilo, Piazzolla. El tango. We dance too early in the kitchen, like the old men in Buenos Aires. I imagine Mercedes showing my English grandmother how to drink mate. The air is redolent with the fragrance of jacaranda and malvon, red geraniums hung in summer patios...