I spent most of this past November in the Fraser Valley, British Columbia, on the ancestral and unceded territories of the Sto:lo, Sts’ailes, Semá:th, Mathxwí, Kwantlen, Sq’éwlets, Katzie, and Leq’á:mel peoples. I was there because Living Hyphen was asked to facilitate a series of writing circles in the federal prison system. We wrote and shared stories with 60 incarcerated men from Black, Indigenous, and racialized communities exploring our heritage, our ideas of home(s), and what it means to live in between cultures.
On my second day, one of the men – we’ll call him Mark – came in and right as he sat down, he told me quite gruffly that he struggles with reading and writing and that he has "some kind of disability".
"Is that going to be a problem?" he asked me sharply.
I told him that I didn’t think it would be, but if, at any point, he was having a hard time, we would find a way to work through the prompts together. He gave me a brisk nod, clearly unconvinced. I felt a hum of anxiety, as I often do when I encounter someone who I sense might not care for what I have to offer.
As a grounding ritual, I opened our workshop with a gentle pause to acknowledge where we were at – emotionally, physically, and mentally. I asked everyone to share just one word or one sound to express how they were feeling as we were about to start writing together.
Before I could even finish my sentence, Mark shouted out – almost angrily – "STRUGGLE".
The volume of that hum kicked up a notch.
I thanked Mark for his honesty, while the other men continued to share a range of words and sounds – none as intense or memorable as Mark’s.
I explained that I asked this question with no judgment. The opposite, actually. I wanted to use this moment as a reminder for all of us to hold compassion for ourselves.
“We are human. Every day, every hour can, and often does, feel different. And that’s ok. Where you’re at is perfect for our time together. Our writing circle is called “Write As You Are,” after all,” I reminded them.
Our writing workshops at Living Hyphen have three key ingredients: a writing prompt, a time limit for each prompt, and an opportunity to share out loud what we’ve written down or even just how we felt while writing. This last piece is always optional. These writing circles were no exception and followed the exact same format.
I was surprised when Mark raised his hand to share what he wrote for one of the prompts. I was even more surprised when he shared a deeply personal story about being made to feel stupid in school, of being made to feel small by the adults around him. When he shared this, the energy shifted instantly. The vulnerability Mark offered was palpable, and in that moment, I knew that a wall went down and a path was cleared.
Mark continued to share out loud for almost every single writing prompt.
I closed the circle in the same way I opened it, asking everyone to share just one word to express how they felt now that our time together was coming to an end, now that we were leaving the space we created together.
Mark didn’t interrupt this time, and instead, he took his time finding his word, and when he found it, he shared simply: "embraced".
I was profoundly moved, and in that moment, I wanted to offer him a literal, physical embrace.
It’s been a few weeks now since I returned home to Tkaronto, and I am still thinking about my time working in the prison system and the men I had the privilege of sharing space and sharing stories with. I often think about Mark.
When I first began this journey with Living Hyphen, I wrote our mission statement as such:
Living Hyphen’s aim is to reshape the mainstream and to turn up the volume on voices that often go unheard.
But why?
For all our fancy words of equity, diversity, representation, anti-racism, “cultivating a culture of tender and courageous storytelling,” blah blah blah blah, Mark captured the essence of what we are really striving for in this work: to embrace each other.
In an embrace comes safety and belonging, comes comfort and care, comes love. And ultimately, that is what the last seven years of stewarding Living Hyphen have been about. Extending an embrace, giving a warm and comforting hug to the people and communities who often haven’t felt safety, belonging, comfort, care, or love in this wider world.
As we close another year and move into another, I am holding Mark’s trust, his stories, his softening, and his wisdom – along with that of the many men who deeply impacted me in those brief but unforgettable weeks – as my North Star, as a reminder of what exactly we are doing here at Living Hyphen and why.
Just as I’ve done every year, I wanted to close out 2025 by sharing what we got up to at Living Hyphen and the communities that we embraced this year and hope to continue to hold in the warmth of our arms.
Honouring the Humanity of Incarcerated Men
Living Hyphen facilitated writing workshops and storytelling circles to support the mental health and well-being of people from racialized communities who are incarcerated in the federal prison system.
This project was almost a year in the making and culminated in Write As You Are, our federal prison in-reach storytelling program designed specifically for those who carry stories shaped by movement across oceans, languages, generations, and borders. As always, our workshops explored home and heritage, identity and belonging – subjects that touch each and every one of us.
We worked in five prisons across the Fraser Valley and shared stories with 60 men who taught us so much about their various cultural backgrounds, the colonial histories of their homelands, and their own lived experiences. There is so much more to share about this experience and the lessons we learned along the way from these men.
We affirm the inherent dignity and humanity of people who have been incarcerated. We honour their complexity and potential, and aim to facilitate spaces where they can be seen, heard, and valued.
Living Queer History
While Living Hyphen often focuses on our experiences related to our racial, ethnic, or cultural backgrounds, we know that we are all so much more than that. Our identities are made up of more than one single intersection of our identity, including but, of course, not limited to our sex, gender, sexuality. Our identities are never singular; we are multidimensional, multifaceted. We contain multitudes.
That’s why we partnered with the Peel Art Gallery, Museum + Archives this summer to host Living Queer History, a storytelling celebration dedicated to examining the intersections of queerness and space, and how we can foster belonging and connection. We created a space not for queer stories, but we did something more than just that. We engaged in an act of placemaking.
At a time when trans rights and queer lives are under attack, gathering like we did – out loud, in public, in community – was a powerful and necessary act of resistance and joy. We brought to the stage brilliant spoken word artists, sensational drag artists, powerful playwrights, and talented musicians who demonstrated the power of placemaking and who remind us why queer spaces, in all their forms, are essential.
Continued Solidarity with Palestinians
It has now been over two years since the intensification of Israel’s genocidal violence against Palestinians in Gaza. But of course, by now we know that this violence has been going on for far longer than that.
For 77 years, the Palestinian people have endured genocide, sieges, dispossession, and forced displacement at the hands of the Zionist colonial project. And for 77 years, they have resisted. Palestinians continue to fight for their land, their freedom, and their return.
On May 15, 2025, we marked the ongoing Nakba with 24 hours of Palestinian poetry at The Theatre Centre with Poetry for Palestine Toronto. We were honoured to bring Palestinian poets and allies from our community on stage to share original poetry and translated works by Palestinian poets from across the diaspora and from Palestine.
At Living Hyphen, we are a community made up of people from diasporas around the globe as well as Indigenous people from nations across Turtle Island. All of our ancestral histories have been marred in some way by colonization, imperialism, racist immigration policies, and state-sanctioned violence. We know that our struggles are interconnected, as is our liberation.
None of us is free until we are all free.
Holding Each Other In Grief
We were in K'emk'emeláy̓/Vancouver in April on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ Nations to host our first storytelling gathering on the west coast. Days before our event, the Filipino/a/x community was celebrating Lapu-Lapu Day, a block party in the Sunset on Fraser neighbourhood that honours Datu Lapu-Lapu, the Filipino chieftain who resisted colonial forces and defeated Magellan at the Battle of Mactan in 1521. It is a day dedicated to celebrating rich and vibrant culture, the ongoing history of colonial resistance, and the Filipino/a/x people’s powerful struggle for liberation.
On that day, a man drove a black SUV into a crowd of people at the festival site, killing 11 people and injuring dozens more. The Filipino/a/x community across the diaspora and motherland – of which I am a part – was rocked with profound grief in the wake of this preventable tragedy.
We quickly shifted our original plans for our storytelling gathering to hold space for expressions of grief, loss, rage – any and all emotions.
How do we metabolize these feelings? By remembering to return to our breath, by sharing and listening to each other's stories and lived experiences, and by holding each other as a community.
Amplifying Immigrant and Refugee Experiences
Over the last year, the Canadian government has cracked down on immigration, particularly among temporary residents and refugees, justifying such policies as a response to the housing crisis and strained public services. It is a tale as old as time: scapegoating immigrants to distract from government failures and fueling xenophobia. We know this story all too well.
We resist the colonial strategy of flattening our experiences and turning us into caricatures – a shameless act of dehumanization. Over the last year, we worked with school boards and settlement agencies across Ontario to support newcomers across all age groups in sharing their stories and developing their personal narratives in the language(s) of their choice. Our goal was to instill a sense of courage, confidence, and curiosity in the students to speak out loud their stories, while also listening and bearing witness to various lived experiences.
Living Hyphen facilitated a series of storytelling workshops at the Halton District School Board in middle schools across Burlington, Halton Hills, Milton, and Oakville, as well as Brampton with the Peel District School Board, and North York with the Toronto Catholic District School Board. We also gathered students from Grade 7-12 across Bruce and Grey counties for the Multilingual Learners Symposium – a day full of writing, music, and connection. We also connected with settlement agencies in the Niagara region to support adults who have just arrived in Canada.
At Living Hyphen, we remain steadfast in our commitment to amplify newcomer stories in all their nuance and complexity. As we always say, our stories are beautiful, heartbreaking, uplifting, contradictory, and constantly unfolding.
As we move into another year, we will continue to wield our gifts of storytelling and story sharing towards our collective healing and our shared liberation.