Hey <3

When I was moving from Fredericton, NB to Hamilton, ON in 2021, I had to drastically downsize. That meant giving away most of my precious books. I made an activity out of it: I asked who was interested, then carefully chose a book for all my friends that I thought they would like, and wrote a little note on the first page. A friend joked that I was becoming the local book fairy, which led to us riffing on that term—I was the prose pixie, the diction dryad, the novel nymphet (as opposed to a plain old nymph, a nod to Nabokov). Boom, a new screen name was born.

This substack is about my life, and literature, and femininity, and cultural criticism, and being poor and queer and in your 20s and wanting to live meaningfully and ethically. It is an effort not to lose my writing momentum just because I finished my MA. And hopefully it will bridge the distance between my friends and I. I’ve always been very shy about writing, but I want to open up and share my thoughts with the people who inspire me.

You should subscribe if any of that appeals to you. Let’s connect and collab and make stuff.

Peace and love,

Shan