Marion Agnew

All Lit Up, a resource all about Canadian publishing, has a Writer's Block column, and a week ago, I was the featured author! Go here to read about REVERBERATIONS, my office, my rituals and routines, and my lifelong quest. (Hint: it relates to notebooks.) My advice for dealing with writer's block While you're there, check out all the other treasures of All Lit Up , which serves as a hub for readers interested in Canadian writers, a bookstore for those who don't have one in their own town, and a community for those interested in Canadian writers. Many thanks to Signature Editions, a Canadian publisher who makes things happen for their authors. I'll just be over here preparing for the Centre for Health Care Ethics panel presentation this evening , which I'm so looking forward to!

In a week, I'll be part of a panel, sponsored by the Lakehead University Centre for Health Care Ethics, that considers the ethics of storytelling in health care settings. It will also be webcast! Here's a link to all that info. The featured speaker is Dr. Cynthia Wesley -Esquimaux , Lakehead's Chair on Truth and Reconciliation. I'm sure her insights as a researcher, and an indigenous researcher, will generate a lot of discussion. After she speaks, those of us on the panel ( Dr. Elaine Wiersma ,  Dr. Vicki Kristman , and I) will respond, discuss, and take off on tangents (oh wait, that's me), with Kristen Jones-Bonofiglio, Director of the Centre for Health Care Ethics, moderating. One might wonder what I'm doing up there, with distinguished and experienced researchers and storytellers. First, I'm there to represent those non-experts who write about tender and touchy subjects that relate to health care. Choosing to navigate, on the page, my mother...

So far, 2020 has been busy. January was Alzheimer's Awareness Month , and now February is ... well, flying by, mostly. Fortunately, my evenings for the past few months have included time for reading. And although I don't write reviews, as I've said , I enjoy reading and I enjoy sharing books and resources. (Which is the purpose of the label " go there and read this .") In that spirit, here is a book I've enjoyed reading recently: When the Ice Falls , by J. E. Barnard . Full disclosure: Jayne once lived in this region, our paths have crossed in real life. She's a lovely person, and an excellent writer. Her work has won awards and she obviously doesn't need me to say nice things--so all of the things below have no agenda other than letting you know of a book you might really enjoy. Where the Ice Falls is the second in a series, The Falls Mysteries. The first, When the Flood Falls   (July 2018), gots lots of positive attention. I enjoyed it an...

I doubt I'll ever be finished writing about Alzheimer's and dementia. Still, I meant to write a wrap-up post for 2020's Alzheimer's Awareness Month . However, I'm changing course, a bit. In recent days, I've been talking with friends and family, those who feel safe and those who don't, those who feel optimistic and those whose hope has flickered so long it's going out. Grief is everywhere, or so it seems. In late January, this article crossed my desk : David Kessler's, at LitHub, on how we experience grief, an excerpt from his book Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief . The article full of wisdom, much of which I hadn't considered, even though I feel more at home with grief than some I know. For example: grief and mourning are different--grief is what we feel, mourning is our action. For example: from a researcher in Australia, the story from a northern indigenous village--that when someone dies, people move something from their ho...