Kate Heartfield
@kateheartfield
I write novels, games and stories. Coming in 2026: MERCUTIO and THE SWORDMASTER. Writer at CHEO Foundation (my views are my own). Former journalist. From Manitoba, now in Ottawa. She/her. Trans rights are human rights 🏳️🌈
What a joy to listen to Billy Bragg in the sunshine. Turns out he is a gracious workshop host, an amazing one with DUG, Kathleen Edwards and Jamie Webster. Earlier highlight of Day 4 was Chicha Libre with Brighde Chaimbeul on Scottish small pipe and Gwenifer Raymond fingerpicking, below.
Very large excited crowd waiting for Khn and Klek at the party stage
Jesse Welles on the main stage. I told him the internet says hi.
Highlight for me of Winnipeg Folk Fest Day 2, daytime shift: Jesse Welles joined by The Pairs and Mon Rovîa on Knockin' on Heaven's Door. I have now gone in search of coolth and to rest up for the Angine de Poitrine mosh pit tonight.
Highlight for me of Winnipeg Folk Festival 2026 Day 1: Horse Lords www.horselords.org
The kind of bean in the photo is actually fève, at least in Canadian French (source: my pantry) but "haricot" kicks ass because it comes from Frankish for "to lay waste" (rel. to English "harry") > slicing up > stew > beans (with possible influence at the final stage from Nahuatl "ayecotl")
Thanks for all the conversation is response to this post. I write in many registers for many audiences, including at my day job, but if you ever want to read a book that is me just using the words I want to use, it's Mercutio. If you like that sort of thing.
Well, all I can say about this storm is: yikes. So far we still have power but a lot of house-shaking booms and we're not even in the red yet.
I don't know what you mean, the art in my room was very bland and comforting. "We're glad we have you" ahhhh thanks 🥰
Tim Hortons currently has Taste of the World Timbits because of the soccer. This is my ranking, with the best at the top: Canadian Fireworks Chocolate Crème Brûlée Lime Cheesecake Cappuccino This has been a lunchtime doughnut update.
Ottawa friends! I'm very pleased to be the host for @davidjonfuller.bsky.social 's book launch on June 16 at Perfect Books. We may or may not be joined by theatrical ghosts! Please come by if you can.
Lunch break! I resisted Clues by Sam at first because I thought it was like the intelligence tests I had to take as a kid. But I love it. At first, I reached for clues quickly, but now I force myself to slow down, step away, whatever I need to get a clean field. Good for my brain and helps me learn.
As anyone who has ever seen me pull out my Bag o' Stamps at a book signing knows, I buy a rubber stamp that fits the theme of every book. Mercutio's is this illustration of Queen Mab, which I think is from A Treasury of Verse for Little Children, 1923. From Butter Side Down stamps.
Colombian coffee and sweet cheese plantain at Encanto in Manotick. The staff and other customers are discussing the ways in which salchipapas are and are not like poutine.
This is why I love when alternate histories have alternate vocabularies, just because language takes such odd paths, and we forget. In some universe, the word "gas" is the colloquial term for Coca-Cola, derived from gasogene, the bottle used to carbonate soda* water in the 19th c. *there it is
When I do Clues by Sam with my morning brain (which for me is the worst brain), I am slower at solving. But I guess using it to wake up the brain is good.
Nothing like some women's hockey to celebrate Mother's Day. Go Charge go
If you are in the UK, there are only a few hours left in which you can pre-order my novel Mercutio, which is about Shakespeare's character and the poet Dante accidentally opening a rift to Faerie, as one does. As of midnight, it'll be a regular order! It might be in your local bookshop already 👀
I would buy a coffee table book on facial hair in the labour movement (which has sometimes corresponded with ideological fractures!) Check out the soup strainer on Terence Powderly, Grand Master Workman of The Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor.
Look what arrived! Looking forward to digging into the latest from @lollardfish.bsky.social. As an op-ed editor in a former life, I know how needed this book is.
With Amy Tector at Books on Beechwood. Get her cool mystery books set in Ottawa archives!