Hearty congratulations to Michelle Cho who has won the 2021 Harlequin Diverse Voices Scholarship at The Humber School for Writers in Toronto.

Michelle and I were classmates at the University of Toronto's summer writing school, and she graciously served as…

The following review appeared in the Fall/Winter 2021 issue of the ADR Update Newsletter (Published version here.)

"When you take up this volume, you notice its brevity (115 pages). You wonder “How much can the author tell me in such…

On November 22, 2021, I spoke with Joseph Planta of The Commentary (Vancouver, B.C.) about Don't Lose Sight. Joseph commented that my frustration with the medical and legal bureaucracy was "one part of the memoir that makes it compelling,"…

"The preface of Genevieve A. Chornenki’s short memoir, Don’t Lose Sight: Vanity, incompetence, and my ill-fated left eye is a glowing ode to the visual surprises of the every day. Chornenki delights in the colours and textures of a…

The Miramichi Reader highlights what it considers to be noteworthy books and authors across Canada from coast to coast. Its website invites viewers to peruse its Book Reviews, Author Interviews, Literary Criticism and Essays, posted daily. On October 16, 2021…

Canadian actor Jennifer Lieberman interviews writers and others to find out their creative practices and preferences. It was a pleasure to speak with her in early summer 2021 on the condition that I not say, "I never thought I would…

The Canadian Authors Association presents a podcast called Words with Writers, and I was honoured to be interviewed by co-hosts Brandi Tanner and Christ Gorman. The episode was published on May 29, 2021. You can listen at Words With Writers,…

Reviewed by Voy Stelmaszynski, past President of SOAR

“Grace, luck, accident, serendipity, mystery, or the random workings of the universe.” 

I have plucked this sentence from the middle of Genevieve Chornenki’s delightful little memoir, Don’t Lose Sight, because it captures the content, essence and mood of her very personal journey through Ontario’s healthcare system, including a look into the workings of the regulatory sector of health professionals.  It’s a sharply written intrigue, a story of birth, love, pain, perseverance and (maybe) justice. 

Grace, because the volume is written with precision, humour and elegance. Chornenki is an acute observer of the visible and invisible.  She’s funny, profound and good with a turn of phrase. 

If I were God 

I would exceed Artemis of Ephesus with her necklace of knackers 

and the handmaid of the Lord, Great Mother though she be. 

I would be pitiless, 

Punishing to those who desecrate the primal void and shatter my sacred silence. 

Don't Lose Sight was evaluated independently for the Whistler Independent Book Awards and received "good" and "excellent" ratings for almost all of the rating criteria. Whistler Independent Book Award 2021 Evaluation

Jane Beddall, a mediator and conflict coach for over 30 years, hosts a podcast that explores ways to preserve and restore harmony by preventing or limiting conflicts that may damage valued relationships and ways to effectively resolve those that may occur.  In an interview published on August 4, 2021, Jane interviewed me about how I squared my professional experience in dispute resolution with my personal experience as a complainant in a discipline proceeding. 

The following review was posted by the Toronto Knitters Guild in Member News on July 11, 2021.

In 2015, Sylvia Olsen took a road trip that started out as a book tour but evolved into a series of knitting workshops at various locations across Canada. Unravelling Canada: A Knitting Odyssey is her reflections completed seven years after the trip. One reader described the book to me as a “travelogue,” but I think of it as an acutely contemporary meditation on the origins and nature of Canada. Central to the book is the process by which Olsen comes to appreciate the country’s present-day diversity, built up over the centuries. She begins her tour on the West Coast as “an ambivalent Canadian” but ends on the East Coast a “hopeful” one, and the progressively gentler tone of the book parallels this evolution.