Check out my latest essay about travelling Ontario in the time of COVID
Sold another essay recently, and it’s a return to my roots so to speak – travel writing! I used to sell travel writing all the time (probably because I was travelling so much!) but obviously because of COVID, travel has been restricted. So I wrote for the official Northern Ontario Travel magazine about how 2020 was very much about no-passport travel for me and my boyfriend. We took road-trips across northern Ontario and discovered places we ordinarily would never have ventured to. We also discovered a lot of perks of travelling in the time of COVID that were totally unexpected.
The piece includes all of my own original photography as well (yes those are my tender tootsies on the dashboard). The story is actually really funny (well it’s funny now in hindsight) because we also got horrible lost at one point with not a soul around for kilometres and we were saved by a local man named Keith. Let us forever sing the ballad of the legend of Keith of the north. Praise be.
Click here to read my story in its entirety. Enjoy and travel safely.
But wait, there’s more!
Recently I told you about the short play I was performing for the Next Stage Community Booster in the Toronto Fringe Festival. Welp, the festival was a huge success, and my short was even reviewed!
Mooney On Theatre (which is one of the most popular and all-expansive theatre critique sites in Toronto) said that my performance was “expressive,” “graceful,” and “definitely worth checking out.”
So . . . I don’t suck? News to me!
I’m so pleased my writing and performance resonated with so many people! Check out the entire review of my theatre piece here.
As always, don’t forget to check out Christine Estima dot com for more of my published works and performances!
Listen to my @CBCTapestry interview in full!
Recently, I mentioned that my feature essay in Maisonneuve Magazine was garnering some media attention. Now, the CBC Radio show Tapestry has taken an interest. They read my article and then interviewed me about my essay and my Arab family’s deep roots in Canada. The interview is about 20 minutes long and it even sounds like a radio play! There’s music and sound effects and other media, archival, and research clips peppered throughout. It’s a super fun listen, so please click this audio file to listen or click here!
The show aired on CBC Radio One this past weekend, but the entire interview is also available anytime to listen on their website. I’m so pleased that my article and my family’s story is resonating with so many people! It’s so great sometimes to be a writer and have your words really mean something to complete strangers.
Read my #TravelWriting piece in The Globe and Mail @tgamtravel #Travel section
Two essays published in one week? I feel pretty spoiled. Head over to the Life-Travel section of The Globe and Mail (a national newspaper here in Canada) and read my piece about chasing the lost art of the Viennese Ex Libris! It’s online today, and will be published in the print edition tomorrow (Saturday, June 18, 2016). I will update this post once I have the actual thing in my painted-fingernail’d-hands.
Edit! Turn to page 5 of the Travel section!
This has been in the works for a while and I’m super proud of how it all turned out. Working with the peeps over at G&M was really positive and I’m glad this went from pitch to published in a relatively short turnaround. Read the piece by clicking here or the photographs!
I’ve been really lucky over the past few years with how many editors and publications are willing to take me on, and who support my voice and writing style. Hopefully that can continue! Already, I have a few more publications that I’ve sold, slated for later this year, so when they come out, expect me to BLOG IT LIKE IT’S HOT.
Don’t forget to check out the official Christine Estima dot com. It’s got all my published works up there for you to read over a cuppa and a slice of cake. Enjoy!
Check out my latest essay ‘Sarajevo Roses’ in the new issue of @ThePuritan!
Remember last summer when my essay ‘Sarajevo Roses’ was long-listed for the 2015 CBC Canada Writes Creative Non-Fiction Prize? They even profiled me on the CBC website (#swag). Well now I’ve sold the piece to The Puritan! It appears in their new issue which dropped today! And, best of all, you can read the piece in its entirety on The Puritan website!
It’s a piece about my time in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina in 2008 when the former Serbian despot and war criminal Radovan Karadzic was finally arrested and transferred to The Hague to stand trial for crimes against humanity during the Yugoslav wars and the siege of Sarajevo. The Balkans have a special place in my heart, as I backpacked through the region at a time when you could still see war damage on every street. The former Yugoslav countries (I backpacked through Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Slovenia) hadn’t yet applied for EU membership, and for many of them, tourism was brand-new, as they had just eased their visa-requirements. It felt like I was walking through an authentic European culture untouched (for the most part) by globalization, westernization, and homogenization.
This blog is so old, you can actually read my posts from my time there. Here’s one from my time in Sarajevo and Mostar. There are photographs in that post of the actual Sarajevo Roses, and other things mentioned in The Puritan piece, like the destroyed Olympic bobsled track and the To Be Or Not To Be cafe.
It was really great working with the peeps at The Puritan, they were full of great ideas and had so many insights for my piece and how I should develop it. The issue looks nifty so check it out in full on their website!
Don’t forget to check out the official Christine Estima dot com where you can find all of my published works and more!
Check out my latest essay in @VICE: Nicole Arbour’s lack of satire
My latest essay has been published in VICE, about the ragebait videos of Toronto cheerleader Nicole Arbour: we all know she’s racist, misogynist, and a fat-shamer, but she also loves to hide behind the banner of “satire” to get away with her bullshit. This piece is about her lack of understanding of what constitutes satire, and also, why comedy is so important and relevant when done right.
Also, I get to talk about her asshole.
It’s also one of the more popular pieces on the VICE network as of right now, so that’s pretty rad.
Some new details about her have emerged since publishing this piece (which I won’t get into on ye olde blog), and I’m getting a lot of private messages from people who have worked with her and know her, who say they can confirm some allegedly criminal behaviour on her part. Toronto is a massive metropolis but it’s small enough that everybody knows everybody somehow, and if your shit smells, people are gonna talk about it. I don’t address this controversy in my piece, but it’s interesting to note and keep in mind.
Anyway, enjoy!
Don’t forget to check out Christine Estima dot com if you want to read more of my published works, included many more of my VICE essays.
Check out my latest essay in AufBau!
Last year I wrote a couple articles for the Swiss German monthly magazine AufBau, which has been around since the 1930s when it was based in NYC, and whose contributors have included Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt. It was a great experience and they were really easy to work with. They even translated my stuff into German which was pretty nifty! So I was delighted to get a message from them a few months ago asking me to pen a personal essay for their Winter issue! The issue “Unsere Welt,” which means “Our World,” (those German lessons paid off!) is an issue that contains a multitude of essays with a global perspective on current pressing issues of the day. My essay, which they published in both German and English, is about my experiences of reporting sexual harassment in both Toronto and London, and compares/contrasts the approach taken by both police departments. Look at the side-by-side I’ve created here:
You can check out AufBau online here, and you can read the issue in which I appear in German and in English here.
I have sold a few more pieces lately to different journals and magazines, and am eagerly awaiting their publication dates! When they hit the shelves, you’ll be the first to know! In the meantime, don’t forget to check out the official Christine Estima dot com for all of my publications, performances, and more!
Check out my column in @MetroNewsCanada
Pick up a copy of the weekend edition of Metro News and turn to the centrefold for my latest column. I talk about the language we employ when talking about race and ethnicity.
It was really great to work with the team at Metro, the whole process was very fast-paced and positive. It was such a challenge to put everything I wanted to say into a mere 400 words, I’m used to writing 1500-word essays, so I welcomed the challenge to be brief and succinct. BUT I’M SO LOQUACIOUS!
Also, funny sidenote: that photograph of me there… That was taken yesterday with my iPad as I sat in a café on Spadina. OH THE GLAMOUR.
Fanks for reading, my munchkins, and don’t forget to check out ChristineEstima.com for more on my writing career.
My latest @VICE essay: bad-as-fuck women populate #TIFF15 films
Check out my latest schlepp’ for VICE, this time about all the amazingly badass beautiful broads in TIFF films this year. Writing this piece was so fun because I got to attend the pre-TIFF press screenings for two weeks. I see a lot of bad movies so you don’t have to (and some good ones). There was only one film I saw that I didn’t include in this piece, simply because there were no women in it — Son of Saul — but holy fuck, I highly recommend that film as well.
I used to cover TIFF every year as a critic, but I haven’t done it since 2011 when I was still writing for Exclaim! It was so difficult seeing like 5 films a day, and having to file your reviews by like 7am the next morning, and then doing it all over again! I swore after that year I’d never cover TIFF again, but I guess old habits die hard.
Anyway, enjoy, comment, and share! Happy TIFF’ing.
As always, don’t forget to check out the official Christine Estima dot com where you can find all of my published works and more.
My latest @VICE essay: TAMPONNNNNNS
Check out my latest essay in VICE about the removal of the tampon tax (huzzah!) but how saying the word tampon in public brings about an avalanche of giggles and side-eye.
I say the word “menstruating” a lot. Blood blood blood blood. BLOOD CLOTS. Enjoy!
It’s one of the most popular essays on the network, which is always great to see.
Check out my VICE category for more of my essays that I’ve written for them. And don’t forget to check out the all new ChristineEstima.com where you can find all of my published works.
Fired Him Right In The Paycheque: my latest @VICE essay, #FHRITP
I wrote about #FHRITP for VICE. TL;DR – dudebro comedy is a subtle art & bitches be cray. Pffft. Females, amirite?
#Satire
Click here or click on the above image to read it.
The piece is being received very well, it’s one of the most popular on the VICE network.
It’s great to see how responsive people are to this, so I’m well chuffed. I told my editor I was worried the satire therein might fall flat & people would think I was condoning #FHRITP. Lesson learned: never assume your audience won’t get it. Oh they get it.
Fanks for getting it, munchkins. YOU ARE THE WIND BENEATH MY WINGS.
Check out my VICE category for all of the other essays I have written for them.
And don’t forget to check out my freshly-pressed ChristineEstima.com for more writing samples and links to my published works.
Check out my academic essay in Palaver Journal!
I recently wrote an essay about narratives of romance in spoken word and sold it to Palaver Journal, an interdisciplinarian journal based out of the University of North Carolina. I did my Masters degree in Interdisciplinary Studies. FINALLY USING IT.
The basic idea behind the essay is that the practice and process that once were associated with writing love letters is now used almost exclusively in spoken word, as the former is in decline and the latter has risen from its ashes, so to speak. So what once was written is now verbal. What was private is now public.
My essay appears in their new Spring 2015 issue out now, and you can read it online for free. You can check out the entire issue here or you can just read my essay here. I appear on page 27!
And don’t forget to check out my all-new ChristineEstima.com for all of my published works and writing samples!
My latest #VICE essay: Don’t ask me to kill your cat, m’kay?
This actually happened to me earlier this month, and I’m still actually really upset about this incident, but my editor at VICE suggested I write about it, so here it is. I AM FILLED WITH RAGE-AHOL. And also sad-sniffles. I mean, who does something like that? I totally lost my shit.
FUCK HER.
FUCK HER FOREVER.
Anyway, fanks for reading and for the support. Check out my past VICE essays and op-eds all here.
And don’t forget to check out ChristineEstima dot com for all of my previous publications and other fancy-schmancy shit that I get up to.
The Spadina Monologues 