Writing for empathy, ethics, and education.
In all things I do, I seek to improve our ability to speak ethically about humans, animals, and the planet. I’m passionate about the use of storytelling in advocacy and science communication. I want to find the best ways to foster empathy with other species, as well as with our fellow human beings. My mission is to encourage compassion, courage, curiosity, and creativity in all forms of media.
I am an independent scholar, writer, editor, lecturer, advocate, and strategist. I am the author of Literature, Science, and Animal Advocacy in Canada: Practical Zoocriticism, the first book of its kind.
I’m also a keenly inclusive gamer and Dungeon Master with players from ages seven to seventy. Gaming is for everyone. The stories we tell together shape our world.
Literature, Science, and Animal Advocacy in Canada: Practical Zoocriticism
My first book is about how we know other animals. It introduces practical zoocriticism as a framework for studying how different forces interact to shape our ideas about other animals. By exploring interactions between literature, science, and animal adovacy in Canada between the 1860s and early 2000s, this book demonstrates that what we ‘know’ about other species fluctuates radically over time.
Literature, Science, and Animal Advocacy in Canada is the first book-length study of animals in Canadian literature. Using a historical approach, it offers a much-needed alternative to existing models of animals as symbols of Canadian victimhood. Spanning more than a century, the scope of this book includes classic writers, Ernest Thompson Seton and Charles G. D. Roberts, as well as popular contemporary authors, such as Barbara Gowdy, Yann Martel, Margaret Atwood, and many others. By recontextualizing these works with closer attention to contemporary scientific and animal advocacy debates, this book offers a fresh new perspective on a wide range of texts.