New book: Nowtown
What makes a city? Calgary, Alberta, Canada is a young polis which has been heavily stereotyped as a backwoods Cowtown but like all stereotypes, the moniker does not tell the entire story.
Enter Nowtown: Re-Envisioning Calgary, out from Coach House Books later this month. More than 40 community leaders, journalists, historians, artists, architects and thinkers come together to share essays that unpack and explore what makes Calgary unique, from its artist run centres to the intricacies of its political makeup, and beyond. Both critical and celebratory, the book tracks and traces threads and perspectives from a diversity of voices.
My essay in the anthology explores nostalgia and creativity through my own pathways through the city as a young wannabe writer in the early 2000s through to today, via the spaces and places that held meaning for me.
The Lido closed in 2014, and its sign sits on the facade of the condo building that wears its name. Kensington is denser, more frenetic. Behind the congested cityscape I see us, skinny kids in newsboy caps and oversized jeans, underslept and free against the pale winter sky.
