Lara Stokes
'Where I create, there I am true.'
Rainer Maria Rilke
Bio
Lara Stokes is a Toronto-based writer from Northern Ontario, moonlighting as a Grade 7/8 teacher in Scarborough. Her work has appeared in The Danforth Review, The Ottawa Arts Review, Burnt Toast (newsletter for The Writer’s Union of Canada) and has been shortlisted for the Toronto Fringe New Play Contest and Geist’s CanLit Short Fiction contest. In 2007 she completed an Honors BA in Theatre and Creative Writing at York University, where she was the recipient of the b.p. Nichol award and the Judith Eve Gewertz Award. She is the nerd behind the blog Across the Bar: Letters to Lost Writers. She is represented by Carly Watters at P.S. Literary agency.
'She reads books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.'
- Annie Dillard
About
When I was eleven I built a tree fort. I dragged old plywood and miscellaneous nails to the woods across the road from my house - hey, it was the 90's, before helicopter parenting. I hammered randomly into the space between two trees and made myself a perch. The neighbourhood kids wanted in on it - the boys came around with their hammers, offering help, but I shooed them away. It was mine. It was my place to sneak over to with a book and a journal and sometimes a cup of tea, to escape from my crazy, lovely, chaotic family. Sometimes a gal needs to build a tree fort to write in.
I've been trying to recreate it ever since.
Photo Credit: Wendy MacCrimmon
WMac Photography
Book: Alterations
I was born with a defective hip joint: at age thirty-two I was forced to leave my job as a teacher when my mobility deteriorated rapidly, resulting in a pelvic reconstruction and hip replacement. What was projected as a three to six month recovery period actually took over two years, resulting not only in a long period of physical disability, but also an exacerbated struggle with mental health. This is a story of physical and emotional healing, how trauma alters us, and the long journey back to myself.