In Writing in the Wound, you share with readers what it means to be shaped by academia, gendered power, and migration, and how your reliance on music proved to be a method of rescue. Why was this an important book for you to write?

I began writing Writing in the Wound at a moment of profound emotional and political intensity in my life. After years of navigating the Canadian immigration system, I found myself confronting not only institutional barriers but also the deeper psychological and embodied impact of living within them.

Initially, I considered writing a more overtly critical, policy-driven book—one that directly addressed the failures and frustrations of the immigration system. But I realized that such a project would take me away from my core as an artist.

What felt more urgent was to write from within my own lived experience—through sound, memory, and relationship. This book became a way of tracing how I endured, and what allowed me to stay. In that sense, it is not only a story of struggle, but of artistic becoming.

In its early drafts, the manuscript was expansive and uncontained. Over time, it found its center—particularly through my relationship with my mentor, which offered a space of care, listening, and growth. That relational grounding became essential to shaping the narrative.

Ultimately, this book created a new path for me—a path where I was no longer masking who I am or what I am enduring within this system. It allowed me to situate myself clearly as an artist, while also naming the conditions I was navigating.

I wrote this book not just to document what happened, but to understand how one continues to create, even within systems that constrain and wound.

Music appears as discipline, refuge, and language—when did it become central to your survival?

Music became central to my survival during the uncertainty of the COVID-19 period. After serving as Music Faculty for Semester at Sea, I travelled to Karachi due to the pandemic and found myself unexpectedly unable to return to Canada for nearly two years, at a time when institutions were largely closed and opportunities had disappeared.

In that period of precarity, when academic institutions had stopped hiring faculty, and it was difficult to teach remotely from where I was situated, music shifted from being a practice of expression to a practice of sustenance. Earlier compositions, like Anticipating and Living with Purpose, had received recognition on international charts and in competitions, which gave me the confidence to continue applying for opportunities. Then, Perils of Heavy Rainfall received Second Prize in Listening during COVID contest (2020).

Gradually, commissions and invitations followed, including from organizations such as New Music Edmonton and New Music Calgary, as well as from the International Women’s Day festival and the Canadian Music Week platform. What began as a fragile thread of continuity became, over time, a means of survival—both materially and emotionally.

Was there a moment when you felt your voice shifting—from survival to assertion?

Yes—there was a moment when everything I had been experiencing condensed into a single, clear sentence: that after 17 years in Canada, I still did not have permanent residency, and that this was not incidental, but tied to the structural limitations of the immigration system.

This clarity came to me in July, during a later stage of working on Writing in the Wound. By that point, the writing had begun to settle, and I was able to see my experience not only as something I had lived through but as something I could name with precision.

Being able to name that so directly marked a shift for me. Until then, much of my writing had been about processing and surviving. But that sentence became a position—it allowed me to see my experience not as an individual struggle, but as part of a broader systemic pattern.

Around that time, I also began to explore new pathways within the immigration system, including applying on humanitarian and compassionate grounds. That process required me to articulate my story not only as narrative, but as a formal claim—something that could be recognized within institutional frameworks. In that sense, my voice was no longer only expressive; it became strategic and assertive.

This shift was also reflected in how my work moved into public space. My writing on the undervaluation of artistic labour was published in Canadian Dimension, and I began sharing my story in community settings, including an event with Action Dignity. Speaking in those spaces—where these issues are often not centered—felt like an important act of bringing lived experience into public discourse.

That momentum continued with invitations to speak at larger gatherings, including a Labour Day event, where my story was witnessed by a wide network of community organizations.

In that sense, assertion was not a single moment, but a series of acts—each one moving my voice from private endurance toward public articulation and advocacy.

What is one thing you hope readers take away from Writing in the Wound?

At its heart, the book asks: what happens when our scars begin to speak?

I hope readers come away with a deeper recognition that the wound is not only personal, but structural. Experiences of migration, racialization, and institutional struggle are not simply endured—they also carry strength, insight, and endurance. They shape ways of seeing, feeling, and creating that are often overlooked or undervalued.

For those navigating migration and racialization, these experiences are frequently internalized, fragmented, or rendered invisible. This book is an attempt to give them form—to show that what is carried in the body and in memory can become voice.

If there is one thing I hope readers take away, it is that these experiences are not only sites of injury, but also sites of knowledge. When scars begin to speak, they do more than tell a story—they begin to name the structures that produced them, and in doing so, open the possibility of shifting those systems—and one’s positionality within them.

Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Amazon