Laurie MacFayden navigates love, longing, lust and loss with deft wordplay and disarming wit, plumbing our most intimate relationships – those entwining family, friends, lovers and exlovers. Her rich imagery, combined with an ability to locate the extraordinary in the everyday, results in poems that range from playful to poignant as she celebrates the complexities of the human heart. In this debut collection, best friends scream downhill on their ten-speed bikes; a tree planter spells out her lover’s name in seedlings; and a mysterious entity steps out of the mist in Stanley Park. The author contemplates how best to seduce Joan of Arc and goes on an abstract-expressionist date with Jackson Pollock. Like the white shirt in the title, these poems are crisp, seductive and a little bit sweaty.

Laurie MacFayden's profile page

• Winner, Golden Crown Literary Award for Poetry
• Short-listed, Lambda Literary Awards

Laurie MacFayden is an award-winning poet, visual artist and journalist who has lived in Edmonton since 1984. In addition to three books of poetry, Walking Through Turquoise, Kissing Keeps Us Afloat, and White Shirt, all published with Frontenac House, her writing has appeared in The New Quarterly, FreeFall, Queering the Way and online at canadianpoetries.com. White Shirt won a Golden Crown Literary Society award and was shortlisted for the Lambda Literary awards. A painter, poet, photographer and avid traveler, she spent more than 30 years as a sports journalist. Her work has been performed in Edmonton’s Loud & Queer Cabaret, Skirts Afire HerArts Festival, and Q the Arts: Calgary’s Queer Arts & Culture Festival. When not wordsmithing or playing with light, she enjoys drinking strong coffee in faraway places. She blogs at spatherdab.com and her art lives at www.lauriemacfayden.com