This is Dorianne Emmerton...
Where did you grow up?
In the barren northlands of the Canadian Shield, lost in the bush between Sudbury and the city affectionately referred to as The Soo. My high school was in a small town called Espanola, my grade school in a tiny town called Massey but my driveway opened out straight onto the Trans Canada highway in one of those sparsely populated stretches of land between towns.
How long have you been in TO?
Long enough to be bitter and jaded, though I expect that's just age not location. I took baby steps out of 'Da Nord', first moving to Sudbury for my OAC year, then going to U of T... Erindale campus, so I was stuck in Mississauga for four years. I moved downtown every summer though and moved to my mecca to stay immediately after graduation. That was 2001; when I embarked on my urban odyssey.
What keeps you busy?
There's the day job, working for The Man. (Really, I work for the Ministry of Finance, how much more The Man can you get?) There's my compulsion towards reading and writing fiction. Then there's making films out of my screenplay-medium fiction. I occasionally perform as a burlesque dancer. There's also patios and parties, sex and movies. I also enjoy playing fetch with my cat.
What is your specific role at work?
Glorified Babysitter, i.e. Admin (and HR support.) But really, that's just what I do for money, the next question is much more fun...
What is your passion?
Everything. I'm a very passionate person. I'm even passionate about hockey, in that I'm passionately against it.
Seriously, I would say humour: the more mordant the better. I fancy fiction in all its forms. And sex, I really really really like sex. I'm also very passionate about conscientious consumerism (Just because there's a Wal-Mart in the No Fly Zone doesn't mean you have to shop there!) and working against the forces of inflexible mindsets and hegemony everywhere.
What do you do to give back to the No Fly Zone?
I shop independent and local as much as possible (Unfortunately it's not always possible, but if more people did it the supply would have to meet the demand!) And I contribute a lot of my finances to the local licensed establishments, particularly ones with patios in these, the brief beautiful months.
How do you feel about the NFZ?
Specifically, I love Parkdale. I love you, Parkdale! I know in a couple of years you'll be subsumed by the gentrification movement and all the poor immigrant families, the mental health survivors, the mental health non-survivors, the junkies and the flunkies and the whores and the boors will all have to move into some other, farther out, ghetto, but right now you are a perfect mix of what is real and what is cool. Parkdale is my home. (And the stuff around it is pretty cool too.)
Are you an Artist? Discuss.
I can't make a piece of visual art to save my life, nor can I read music. I went to theatre school for acting, but I was a writer all along and ultimately I wasn't a very good actor if I was in a play with a script I considered crap (which was quite a lot of them, I'm afraid.) So now I'm a writer of stories, scripts and screenplays, a director and filmmaker and I occasionally get the exhibitionist in me out with a little bump and grind of the burlesque kind.
How has Art influenced your life?
Um... for the better? Considering my art is writing, I tend to have a large active vocabulary. Other than that I'm just annoyingly hounding all my friends to attend this play or pick up that magazine (shameless plug: pick up the new Smut Magazine!)
How do you feel about Art in the NFZ?
We're awesome at it! Thus that aforementioned gentrification. That's what happens: a neighbourhood is cheap so the starving artists move in; then the scenester artists move in to gain cred; then the scenester hipsters follow their friends with talent; then it's the cool new place so grungy old hotels remodel themselves and open up as places with $10 dollar drinks and a crowd out of a music video. But by then, with any luck, the starving artists have sold their work to cover those stubborn cockroach holes in the hotel walls and are no longer starving. (I fit somewhere between starving and scenester: I eat a fair amount of food thanks to The Man day job and a voracious appetite for cheese, but I don't dress well enough to be a scenester.)