I have worked as a professional writer for 15 years, taking a few detours into other arts-and-media related work along the way. I have enjoyed a varied career during which I’ve worked as a fashion stylist, film and video producer and media consultant for clients like CanWest Global in Canada and Hearst Magazines in New York. I was a founding editor of Calgary's alternative weekly, Fast Forward, and have been associate editor at Avenue magazine. I worked as the pop culture trends columnist for the Calgary Herald and was the paper's literary editor for four years. My first book, Spree: A Cultural History of Shopping, was published in Canada and the United States in fall 2003, in the U.K. and Australia in spring 2004, and in China in fall 2006. Spree has been reviewed and featured in many publications around the world, and I continue to do some work as a consumer culture expert; most recently, I was interviewed by The Economist’s Intelligent Life magazine and I am the consumerism columnist for CBC Radio One’s The Point.
Today, I rarely work as a journalist, having instead turned my attention to fiction. My web serial, Halfsquatch, ran from May to September 2008 and my novel, Snapped, will be published by Mira Books in 2010 as the first of a two-book deal (the second book will follow in 2011). I am currently writing the screenplay for a film adaptation of Snapped, produced by Vancouver’s Perfect Circle Films.
In addition to writing, I also works as a photographer, shooting unconventional portraits and unusual places with analogue cameras using expired and often damaged film. My conceptual photography series of children in animal masks, Bestia Parvulus, was completed in summer 2007; my next series, Johnson Wilson and the Case of the Broken Baby, debuted in January 2008, followed shortly by The Ladies of the Balaclava. I created 104 images to accompany her summer web serial, Halfsquatch, and am currently shooting two new series. I have shot photographs for Tokyo based toy camera distributor and publisher, Powershovel and my photography has appeared in Photosho magazine, File Magazine, Platforms Magazine, WLTF Magazine, on CBC Radio 3's website and The New York Times online.
My Bestia Parvulus series has received widespread media attention in Russia and the Ukraine, as well as on many arts websites and blogs, from the USA to Japan to Norway. Several images from the series were featured in the February/March 2008 issue of the Mexico City based art and design magazine, PICNIC. My Ladies of the Balaclava series will be featured in the first issue of the lomography magazine, Lomo, with "Career Girl" as the cover image. Three of the Bestia Parvulus images have recently been licensed by the Barcelona based creative agency, Vasava, on behalf of Italian fashion brand, Diesel, for use in the promotion and advertising of their annual international new music concert series, Diesel U: Music.
I am also is the founder and chief curator of the Secret Society of Analogue Art, an organization that encourages the creative fusion of analogue and digital communication and media by offering an ongoing series of participatory art challenges.
I live with my boyfriend, philosopher Gillman Payette, and my daughter in Calgary, Canada.