Shannon Whibbs

Wore my CBC hoodie to cast my vote. After, I popped into the LCBO and had this exchange with a hoser ahead of me in line.

Hoser: Heeeey, CBC!
Me: You bet!
Hoser: You just get off work now?
Me: Oh, I don't work at the CBC.
Hoser: *perplexed* ... you pretendin'??
Me: I just like the CBC! #CBC

Sign the Petition Stop the Suspension of Sheridan’s Creative Writing and Publishing Program

Sheridan College plans to cut a number of programs, including one that is close to my heart, the Bachelor of Creative Writing & Publishing program. Please consider signing to show support. Thanks! #saveCWP

www.change.org/p/stop-the-s...

imagine being such a huge dork that an entire thriving web site and community exists simply because you suck

Also: If you don't have money to buy my (or anyone's) books, and you live in the anglosphere, before you pirate them, try to get them from your local library instead. They have it or can get it, they pay for the books, and in many places writers get paid for their books being lent. Everyone wins!

It's all I got, man.

My sympathy erodes after about the fourth printing. Though clearly the book was selling like hotcakes, regardless, so maybe I'm the chump? 😂

A favourite, and one I tell my students, was finding a main character's name spelled incorrectly on the back cover of a *17th* printing of “We Need to Talk about Kevin.” 17 chances to fix that gaffe and they missed every. single. one.

No machine can replicate the level of contextual analysis and utter obsessiveness required for this gig. Maybe no one dies if a comma is in the wrong place, but I die a little inside each time if I'm not allowed to fix it. IT WOUNDS ME.

I will go to my grave knowing how to format an em dash on any kind of digital platform.

The quality of my life improved exponentially when I learned the alt-codes for smart quotes and smart apostrophes. So much mental energy spent making sure these tiny punctuation marks are curling the correct way, For non-editors ... oh, who am I kidding? You don’t care and nor should you.

My young niece lives in a different province, but now we have FaceTime dates where she reads Ramona the Pest to me, and as if that wasn't great enough, she schedules the next "appointment" on her paper wall calendar before we say good night. "You made my day perfect," she said tonight. My heart!

Hey authors on Bluesky, you will make your cover designer and/or illustrator’s day by mentioning them when you share how excited you are about your brand new book cover.

The Beaverton Guide to Toronto for Americans who swiped all the Taylor Swift tickets Congrats American swifties! You guys managed to buy a huge amount of the tickets for Taylor's only appearance in the entire country of Canada!

Welcome to our city!

When I get a new paper calendar at the start of the year, I write down friends' birthdays because I realized I had let FB take over that task for me, and I didn't like that. But @westendphoenix.bsky.social already had Paul's noted in their calendar this year, as they should! Happy birthday, Pauly!

all you normie journos onboarding get that this is your chance to abandon ship and renounce your mainstream ways, right? and that you'll get way more of that sweet engagement if you do, win/win? "Hi Bluesky I'm Dan Rather and I'm naked as hell" -- this is what you need to be doing

This is still my advice: Become a writer anyway. Fuck it, do it, it won't save you, but it's still a beautiful dream to write novels and short stories and poems and mingle with other dreamers and make art and laugh in the face of death. And writing is constant death. Live más.

What if we kissed underneath the shrimpletoe 👉👈

I find it weirdly comforting that these monstrosities still exist. Same packaging, even. They defy time. Everything might be going to shit, but Cherry Blossom will always be the favourite candy you'll never buy.

YouTube video by Radiohead Radiohead - Just

My perennial theme song for marking assignments. Assignments I created. For a course I developed.
"You do it to yourself, you do. And that's why it really hurts. You do it to yourself, just you. You and no one else, you do it to yourselllllllflffffFFFFFFFF**k!"
youtu.be/oIFLtNYI3Ls?...

Eternal truth

Making a weekly interview podcast can be a time-suck, but as someone who always ends up in the kitchen at parties, having long conversations with 1 or 2 people instead of mingling, it is also one of the more fun and thoroughly on-brand things I do. Please check it out.

thewalrus.ca/podcasts/wha...

So deadly ✊🏽🙌🏽❤️

From Higgs to Trump, what did this fall’s elections teach Canadians?  | Xtra Magazine OPINION: Ahead of a likely federal election next year, what can Canadians take away from the U.S., New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and B.C.?

For the evening crowd, my @xtramagazine.bsky.social column: From Higgs to Trump, what did this fall’s elections teach Canadians? #canqueer #cdnpoli

Nowhere Is the Dreamer: Songs from a Gen X Canadian Youth, by Allister Thompson 16 track album

I grew up in the 80s and joined my first band in the early 90s. A while back I thought it would be fun to do my own versions of classic Canadian songs of the period, thus this album. Note the full-on 'Miami Vice' attire on 8th grade AT in the photo.

thegatelessgate.bandcamp.com/album/nowher...

Right? It still sounds like one of those “fell into it by accident” gigs. Like how publishing used to be 😂

A couple of weeks ago I found myself seated next to an audiobook director/voice actor at an event and I had SO MANY excitable questions for her. She told me one time she narrated a book that had 60 different characters and she had to develop a voice for each of them, yikes.

Flipping through Naked Lunch again and I remain haunted by this thought. Hits me now the way it hit me then, a long time ago lol.

"You were not there for the beginning. You will not be there for the end. Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative” William S Burroughs

And what a portfolio!