I cut my hair during the pandemic. So, if I’m meeting you for the first time, I no longer look like my old bio photos or my cartoon either. I also don’t look like my passport photo – to the point that on a domestic flight recently, airline personnel stopped me at the gate before boarding to address that I do not not look like the photo on my ID (any of my ID). I countered, “Wouldn’t a faker try to look more like the image in the passport?” The passport office in Canada, however, won’t give me a new one. My fingers are crossed that the customs agents in Panama (in a couple weeks) let me into the country.

I’m the author of Lost in Moscow (published by Turnstone Press in Canada) which CBC radio dubbed “the ultimate what-I-did-last-summer essay ever.” And I was the anthology editor of the Travelers’ Tales (USA) book Wake Up and Smell the Shit. I’ve had around 85 stories (plus my photos) published in books, magazines, and newspapers around the world.