Lytton, BC, Nlaka’pamux Territory
Hi, I’m Meghan
I’m a neurodivergent writer, trauma-informed editor, and climate justice advocate who thinks a lot about grief, community, and what it means to rebuild after disaster.
I live with my young daughter on the edge of Lytton, a village in rural BC that was devastated by wildfire in 2021. That loss shapes both my life and my work.
Before the fire
I spent my childhood and much of my adult life here in Lytton, where two rivers meet and sagebrush-covered hills reach up into mountains. I travelled, I studied, I worked in different worlds (the brutality of an industrial construction site in Alberta, the quiet peace of a university classroom on Vancouver Island), I lived in far-off places (Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Berlin), but I always came home to Lytton.
For almost a decade, I ran Klowa Art Café, a beloved and vibrant little place on Lytton’s Main Street. We featured the work of local and Nlaka’pamux artists, offered healthy vegan food, roasted our own line of coffee beans, and served the best espresso in the canyon.
On June 30, 2021, a wildfire tore through the downtown core of Lytton. Within minutes, it had destroyed our town, scattered our community, and was burning homes and forests in the surrounding area. Klowa was lost to the flames.
After the fire
In the years that have followed, my work has become an exploration of trauma, memory, and climate justice. Through my writing, editing, and community storytelling, I’m interested in how we carry loss, and how we find language for rebuilding.
Making meaning
Creative practice
Writing
I’m currently working on a literary non-fiction book with the support of Canada Council for the Arts. It’s about home and belonging in the aftermath of disaster, and I hope I’m writing it in a way that reflects the fragmented and nonlinear way that we experience, process, and heal from trauma.
My debut book—a story in verse—is Burning Sage: Poems from the Lytton fire. My poetry and prose have also appeared in The Vancouver Sun, Fire Season III, WordWorks Magazine, and elsewhere.
Handknits
Until the fire, my handknits were an integral part of Klowa Art Café. I designed and knit each piece myself, drawing inspiration from the landscape of Nlaka’pamux Territory.
Today, knitting is a small-scale and intimate artistic practice and a form of meaning-making for me. In parallel with writing, it draws on creativity, composition, and place, and functions in part as an archive of my life and in part as a refusal of systems that devalue women’s labour and erase its cultural weight.
This autumn, I'm relaunching Klowa Handknits, a small, considered collection of new designs in natural materials.
In Community
Projects & collaborations
In addition to my writing and editing, I take part in collaborative, community-based, and public-facing work spanning creative projects, climate justice, literary events, and trauma-informed editing.
Media appearances
In the time since the fire, I have been openly sharing my story as a way of advocating for my community. I can’t speak for others, but I can use myself as a personal example in this collective experience.
Recognition
Research and Creation grant, Canada Council for the Arts (2025–2026)
Shortlist, The Malahat Review Open Season Awards in creative non-fiction (2025)
Yaahgudang Climate Justice Award (2024)
Portrait photos by Nlaka’pamux photographer Shelanne Justice