I studied creative writing at the University of Victoria during the 1980s, where I had the good fortune to study and learn from the likes of Jack Hodgins and Constance Rooke.

In 1988, I won the Penny Wise Journalism Scholarship to attend the journalism program at Langara College, after which I became a community newspaper reporter and freelance writer.

These endeavours led to the publication of O-bon in Chimunesu in 1996. A creative non-fiction work about the former Japanese-Canadian community in Chemainus, BC, O-bon won the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize, a BC Book Award, in 1997.

I am currently researching material for a book about my niece, Michelle Lang, the Calgary Herald journalist killed in Afghanistan in December 2009.