Photos by Nlaka’pamux photographer Shelanne Justice
Hi, I’m Meghan
I’m a writer, trauma-informed editor, and climate justice advocate whose work sits with wildfire, trauma, community, and rebuilding after disaster. I’m also neurodivergent, a parent, and a white settler living in Nlaka’pamux Territory.
I live with my young daughter on the edge of Lytton, a village in rural BC that was destroyed by wildfire in 2021. That loss continues to shape both my life and my writing.
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.
Since the fire, 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.
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 to write it in a way that reflects the fragmented and nonlinear way that we experience, process, and heal from trauma.
Four years ago, I sat at the typewriter on the living room floor and wrote Burning Sage: Poems from the Lytton fire. The little book shares my story, in verse, of the first year after the fire. It was published by Caitlin Press in 2023.
My poetry and prose have also appeared in The Vancouver Sun, Fire Season III, WordWorks Magazine, and elsewhere.
Knitting
For many years, my handknits were an integral part of Klowa Art Café. I designed and knit each piece myself, drawing my inspiration from the natural landscape of Nlaka’pamux Territory and working with ethical and sustainable natural materials.
Today, knitting is an artistic practice and a form of meaning-making for me. In parallel with writing, it draws on creativity, composition, and place.
My practice is small-scale and intimate, functioning 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.
In autumn 2026, I'll be relaunching Klowa Handknits—a small, considered collection of new designs in natural materials—at klowa.ca.
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)
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.
