The essays in If You're Not Free At Work, Where Are You Free: Literature and Social Change focus on the interconnection of community/workplace/individual and how literature has a role in social struggles aimed at making that nexus more liberatory. Certain essays develop some of Wayman's earlier ideas concerning the potential of imaginative writing that takes daily work as its central theme. The range of topics includes various social issues in contemporary writing--narrative, love poems, the teaching (and hence status) of poetry, and postmodernism.
Since 1973 Tom Wayman has published more than 20 books of poetry and prose, most recently The Order in Which We Do Things: The Poetry of Tom Wayman and a short fiction collection, The Shadows We Mistake for Love. He lives in Appledale, a suburb of Winlaw B.C.
The Shadows We Mistake for Love: There is nothing safe about these stories. Linked by the ever-present waft of pot, recurring shady characters, and the setting itself, these stories resemble a close-knit community. Shifting in response to internal and external forces, the Slocan Valley and its inhabitants - wholly realized under Wayman's deft touch - feel simultaneously alive and vulnerable.--Quill and Quire