I am a writer, editor, and creative writing teacher with a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. I am probably best known for my involvement with Cloudscape Comics, BC’s largest comics collective. I have written for 10 of their anthologies and been an editor on six, including Waterlogged, Mega Fauna, and Swan Song. Most prominently, I spearheaded Through the Labyrinths of the Mind, an anthology of stories about mental health issues, and the Epic Canadiana series of graphic novels, which pays tribute to the classic Canadian comics of the 1940s and which won Cloudscape the Gene Day Award at the 2016 Joe Shusters. My comics have also been published in the anthology Beyond from Beyond Press and the magazine Pulp Literature, while my fiction has appeared in EDGE’s Superhero Universe: Tesseracts 19 and Black Cat Press’s Black Cat. 

I have taught a variety of creative writing classes for a wide range of students. For many years, I taught writing for comics and comic book history as part of Langara College‘s Graphic Novel and Comix program. I currently teach classes in writing for fantasy, science fiction, and horror through the Alexandra Writers’ Centre. In addition, I served on Cloudscape’s board for many years, helping the organization to engage aspiring writers and artists with the comic book medium.

I have wrestled with various mental health issues my entire life, especially depression and anxiety. For a long time it was something I avoided talking about, but eventually I realized how much it has defined my identity and how empowering it is to read about people dealing with the same issues as you. This has inspired me to explore mental health issues more directly in my writing, to help people like myself feel heard and understood. It also inspired me to create the comics anthology Through the Labyrinths of the Mind, in which a wide range of cartoonists create comics that explore their relationships with depression, anxiety, ADD, PTSD, and other mental health issues.

I write in a wide variety of styles, from the humorous to the dramatic, from the magical to the autobiographical. I am especially drawn to speculative fiction, and often using fantasy imagery to symbolize psychological states and deal with issues of mental health. Among my stories, I have analyzed the depression of one of King Arthur’s knights, explored my grief at my grandfather’s funeral, and documented society after the Robot Revolution.

I live in Vancouver, BC, with my wife and frequent collaborator, the artist and animator Reetta Linjama.