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Voices

Voices is an ongoing series where we ask arts workers in Winnipeg to reflect on the impact of the arts in their lives. In 2025 Voices features essays commissioned by guest editor Jenny Heijun Wills.

Born in Seoul, raised in Southern Ontario, Jenny is a writer and professor of English at the University of Winnipeg. Her books include Everything and Nothing At All: Essays, which was 2024 finalist for the Writers’ Trust Weston Prize for nonfiction and was named a best book by the Globe & Mail and CBC Books. She is also the author of Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related, which won the Weston Writers’ Trust Prize in 2019 and the Manitoba Book Awards' Best First Book Prize in 2020. It was named as a best book of 2019 by The Globe & Mail, CBC Books, and was deemed one of the 10 best Manitoban-authored books of the last decade by the Winnipeg Free Press.

  • learning to bead.

    What kind of earrings would my mother have wanted? What shapes would’ve drawn her eyes; what colours would she have gravitated toward?

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  • Derailed

    I am still at the station watching mournfully as the railcars whiz past, filled with the shared air of dozens of maskless faces. I want to move forward, follow their direction but the platform ends before I can catch up. The trains keep running full speed.

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  • From the editor, katherena vermette

    I can’t think of anything better than savouring delicious writing like this. I have really enjoyed the slow curation of bringing KC, Jason, and Arlea together.

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  • My Journey to Relational Making

    Such a pleasure to meet you. Come sit on the grass next to me while I make a clay vessel.

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  • Fieldnotes, frags

    “Alexander Byvshev, a Russian Poet who criticized his country’s invasion of Ukraine in a four-line poem has been sentenced to seven years jail.” NDTV WORLD, 22 Mar., 2024

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  • ‘Dining Room’

    My first foray into the artistic world was at the tender age of two. I created a mural on the ‘dining room’ wall of our house. I say ‘dining room’ because in actuality it was a bedroom with a dining set crammed in it.

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  • From the editor, Jennifer Still

    A short reflection on writing by Brandi Bird, Hannah Green, Rhayne Vermette, and Clarise Foster.

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  • Critical Incident Report

    Critical Incident Report: Confidential
    Known circumstances of death/serious injury:

    The client has an opportunity to go into Independent Living. Independent Living is a program that places foster children in their own apartments. It is care without care.

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  • LONELIEST GIRL YOU’LL NEVER MEET

    So much of who I have become as a person and as a writer stems from a connection to community in Winnipeg. I was a lonely child and I have carried that adjective into adulthood.

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  • Dear Manners,

    I am writing you today, live from Montréal, on a break from “school” (a film producer incubator). And by “break” I mean, skipping school to watch a movie this afternoon.

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  • Winnipeg’s Challenge To Me

    I can honestly quote Dickens here and say, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”

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  • Transformations

    I first saw Winnipeg as a soft light reflected on low clouds from our farm near Selkirk. I had closer glimpses when I was seven and our family began travelling through at holidays taking my older sister back and forth to her school in Portage la Prairie

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  • Osani stands against a colourful drawing on a wall, wearing a light grey sweater with a white and navy line across the chest and black pants. He has dark hair and full facial hair and stands with his hands in his pants pockets.

    Rap Talk

    Rap helped me through every phase of my life thus far. I wrote these short paragraphs to highlight the journey.

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  • Hannah smiles at the camera with a blue sky and clouds in the background behind her. She has chin-length brown hair with bangs and is wearing dark glasses, a straw hat, and a cream-coloured knit cable sweater.

    The Lights of my City

    I carry an image in my memory of a place that is real but does not exist. This cave is, of course, within me. When I speak or write about it my hands go to my chest and stomach, so I think that’s where it lives.

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  • Primrose stares at the camera with a slight closed-mouth smile on her face. She has long black hair with blonde highlights and is wearing square-framed glasses, a necklace, and a grey shirt. Behind her, there is a river or stream, tall grass, and trees.

    Pause...

    I have written more in the past two years than in the last fifteen.

    I am both reluctant and full of pride to say these words aloud, one of the sound bites I’ve been touting during media interviews. I hold my head held high, but inside I am wrought with survivor’s guilt.

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