How Our Calls Cross the Ocean: stories

Abstract

This collection comprises a short story, a novella, and an essay in fragments which explore themes of queer love and friendship, grief, outdoor adventure, adolescence, settler colonialism, memory, and the writing process. In “How Our Calls Cross the Ocean,” the narrator mourns the death of her son and navigates an intercontinental relationship. In “River,” a young woman recalls a canoe trip that nearly ended in disaster, and comes to grips with her teenage self. Finally, in “Notes from the Insides of Other People’s Kitchens,” I reflect on my fiction, critically and creatively, engage with open questions about storytelling, and dialogue with writers and creators who have recently influenced me. How do we find the courage to connect deeply when we are hurt, and how do we move forward while honouring the past? When someone calls to a part of us that has not yet emerged, what do we do? What are the possibilities for a decolonial settler story? And how do I, as a white Canadian telling stories, ground the relationships between people and peoples in their relationships to place? I ask these questions and others in the context of my reading. I attempt to learn craft—and a philosophy for creating—from writers I admire, including Alice Munro, Sally Rooney, Chrystos, Eden Robinson, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Lee Maracle, Dwayne Donald, and Céline Sciamma.