Icebreakers were never my thing so bear with me. 

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The reason I've never been good at icebreakers isn't that they're awkward or they're overdone, it's because it feels like they're making me conform to a box, like I have to be just one thing. ONE interesting thing about me, ONE goal in life, ONE place that I'm from, ONE experience that shaped me. And the truth is there are a million interesting things about me, and even more goals that I have in life. I'm from more than one place and all these places have thousands of moments that have shaped me. I am a writer, I am a poet. I am an artist and an athlete, a lover of dark films and bubble gum pop music. I live in the city and the country, I am a member of the milky way galaxy and a star gazer looking up at it. I am often found in the confines of a single bedroom and out in the open air laying in the grass. Paints, pens, books, hockey, soccer, rodeo, fuzzy blankets, iced tea, traveling, learning, the perfect lip balm, lakes, boats, my dogs, my cat, rings that are slightly too large to be practical, old DVDs, photos of every moment I've ever lived, friends, family, music. These things all make up the best parts of me. 

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If you're looking for a more practical answer I guess I would say that I am a creator. I write fiction novels and short stories, poems, the occasional article, and screenplays. I am also a filmmaker, an auteur of film if you will. I write, direct, and produce. My work has been featured in magazines, anthologies, and websites around the world, my first film was screened at The Toronto Smart Phone Film Festival and my second short is currently in pre-production. I am also the recipient of the Emily Dickinson Writing Award for my work in poetry. In addition to my creative endeavors, I set out in the spring of 2021 to create a small poetry publication dedicated to helping marginalized and up-and-coming poets share their voices. It grew larger than I expected and I am now the Founder and Editor in Chief of the Undressed Society Publishing House. For this work, I have received a Webby Award Honouree and a nomination for a Media Innovator Award (we will find out if I won shortly). The Undressed Society is now home to two magazines, Literature Undressed and Poetry Undressed which to date have helped to publish over 400 authors from countries in (almost) every continent. 

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If you're looking for more about me outside of the creative sphere I am from a small town in what I refer to when speaking to most people I meet as "northern BC" but really it's the middle of the province. I actually grew up outside of the town on a ranch in what is actually classified as a village, the village of 150 Mile House. My early life consisted of a dedication to sports, hockey and soccer mainly, while traveling around the province to rodeo with my dad, sister, uncle, cousins, and our rodeo family. I often spent time with my sister and our cousins playing long-winded, year-round make-believe games. I think it was this that drove me to be who I am today, to have the means of escaping the world we live in and making something that others can escape into as well. I spent a lot of my teen years searching for love and acceptance, trying to figure out who I was and this is what has led to the more dark themes that take place in my work. Originally I went to art school after high school to become a tattoo artist, then I suffered from one of the worst mental health moments of my life and left that behind. I still struggle with mental health but I've figured out how to cope with it a little better than I had before. I now attend The University of British Columbia which was a shock to most people including myself. I am in my final year, getting my degree that I tell people I most likely won't use when they ask what I'm going to do with it. I still play soccer and I love my team, I found joining it filled one of the pieces that I felt was missing from my life. I spend almost all of my time writing, filming, or watching what other people have filmed and reading what others have written. I have a dog and a cat that I would give up any and everything for and they don't like my writing so much, one barks at me when I read it and the other sits on my keyboard whenever I'm trying to work.

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But I guess, in short, I am a collection of everyone and everything around me. I'm a sponge made of stardust that absorbs every action and thought and word that comes my way, and occasionally I wring myself out and create something with it.

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