Growing up in Waterloo, the Governor General's Award wasn't something I even thought to wish for.

If you realize early what your influence is, you can have a better understanding of what you are writing about.

To map the Governor General's Award is to map both the past and the future of Canadian literature, and to be nominated for my first book is wonderful.

One of my oldest friends has a cottage on Smoke Lake in Algonquin Provincial Park, and it's one of my favorite places in the world.

The imagination is such as powerful tool: suggestion is all you need. People fill in gaps.

Dealing with those personalities and the people who run this music thing has been most challenging. It's hard to really communicate things to people who run a business yet forget the nature of the business. They only look at the bottom line and the financial return, you know, they forget what it is they're packaging. It's art.

I think when I do things outside of music, I am always thinking of different things that are eventually one way or another going to come back to my music. I have to make sure it is all cohesive, as that's important to me as an artist and a person.

Creativity is always intense.