“The freshness of McWhirter’s writing illuminates a lost generation.”
-The Vancouver Sun
ABOUT
Teresa McWhirter was born in Vancouver, and grew up in Kimberley, in the East Kootenays of British Columbia. After receiving a BA at the University of Victoria with a double major in English and Writing (with Distinction), she returned to Vancouver and has lived there since.
She is the author of four novels: Some Girls Do (Raincoast/Polestar: 2002), Dirtbags (Anvil Press: 2007), Skank (Lorimer: 2011) and Five Little Bitches (Anvil Press: 2014).
Various readings have taken her around Canada, from the Vancouver International Writers Festival and Word on the Street to coffee shops, libraries, classrooms, bookstores, and dimly lit bars.
Between bouts of writing and travel, she has worked a variety of interesting jobs, including teaching ESL in Korea, ice cream truck driver, and amusement park monster. She spent years touring with punk rock bands, and enjoys road trips, photography, collecting vinyl, and all things vintage.
She was awarded a Canada Council Grant in 2023 and a BC Arts Council Grant in 2004, 2020 and 2023.
Currently, Teresa is writing a series of horror screenplays with the poet Shane Book.
Teresa McWhirter has recently finished work on her fifth novel.
WORKS
Click on any Book Cover to Read a Sample
Writing Sample from Five Little Bitches (Anvil Press: 2012)
An excerpt in which the band Wet Leather embark on their first Canadian tour…
Pages 146-150
Fanta honks the horn. It’s early morning, and the girls scramble out of the house with their packs. The Chevy van has an extended back crammed with gear, and it’s a tight fit. Kitty rips through her knapsack. “Fuck! Why can’t I find my fucking everything?”
Kitty Domingo, despite what most people believe, is often paralyzed with insecurity she drowns with booze. They are all anxious about the upcoming shows. Squeaky sits in the open side door, tapping her drumsticks. Two little girls ride slowly past on their bikes, gaping. The air cracks with possibilities.
It’s an unusual crew: tough little Squeaky, a five foot menace in a too tall world; the intensity in Fanta’s eyes like a childhood fever never left her; pretty Kitty, a lumberjack princess on the verge of petulance; and noisy Maxine, thrumming with lunatic energy. Nothing can get in their way, no man can take them down. The van doors slam shut.
And they’re off.
The Canadian Tour
The smell of manure creeps into the van. Outside the suburbs of Vancouver rich farmland begins. They drive further on into an arid valley with orchards and wineries, past hills that look like rocks of charcoal with trees growing up the sides and then wind through dense, rugged forests with bright red trees dying from the pine beetles. The van chugs up into mountain ranges that wind down to the golden slopes and cattle land of Alberta. The open road is like a gray tongue, unfolding.
Inside the white whale of the Chevy is a private universe. Each girl has her own place. Fanta and Squeaky sit up front and each drive for three-hour shifts, swapping CDs, maps, and water bottles between them. Maxine takes up the middle seat with her long legs, sprawled like a grand odalisque. In the very back Kitty has carved out a hamster nest, and stretches out between duffel bags and road cases with contentment. Kitty Domingo, they learn, has the uncanny ability to sleep through any kind of noise, in any position. She devolves at rest areas and terrorizes truck stops. Late in the night they stop at a fleabag motel outside Lethbridge. The girls drink a bottle of warm Baby Duck in plastic glasses. Fanta, road weary, falls asleep at once.
The next day Squeaky drives into the stripe of pink and blue on the horizon. She slows at a solitary white church with a roadside Jesus and Mary to give passing blessings. They take this as a sign to pull into a highway diner for breakfast. As they wait for their pancakes and fried eggs, a man in short shorts, studded belt, and shaved legs swings through the restaurant, dual charm bracelets on his ankles. It’s early morning and the sight makes them smile until they hear one trucker warn, with clear malice, “You’re in the wrong place, pal.”
They burn joint after joint as they burn through the plains, a slow scorch on empty stretches of flat road. The cracked earth in Saskatchewan goes on forever, and swatches of dry grass give the land a deserted feel, like nothing could ever grow here. Even the buildings are flat and close to the ground, with no god to encourage their spires.
Kitty declares, “Saskatchewan is the sound of the loneliest fart ever heard.”
They drive into Regina past signs for Holiday Inns and Arby’s, following directions to the industrial part of town. The bar has a familiar smell—spilled beer, sweat, dirt that’s remained in dim corners for decades. Lugging her cases inside, Squeaky passes Maxine, losing her cool with the bar manager. Since they’re the opening band he doesn’t think they need a full sound check. Squeaky’s stomach sinks. The sound will be terrible if they get everyone’s levels in line check.
“Listen sweetheart,” he says, a mid-30’s metrosexual fraying at the edges. Maxine’s jaw clenches, her smile stiff. “If there’s time after Fire Chicken gets through their sound check, fine. If not…” the manager’s voice trails off and he shrugs. “They ain’t coming to see you anyway.”
“Wet Leather will be the biggest band to ever play here,” Maxine says, with a confidence that does not seem at all manufactured. The manager appears to reconsider, and at that moment Kitty runs in.
“Bathroom, bathroom,” she screeches. Having just woken up, her hair stands up in odd black puffs and her jeans are so dirty there’s sheen to the denim. “Goddamn, where’s the can? I gotta throw down to brown town!”
The bar manager is startled. Kitty takes off, holding her ass in a bunny hop as Maxine sighs, pointing, aware she’s just lost some bargaining power. The manager gives a dry chuckle, but there’s nothing humorous in it. Exhausted from the drive, Fanta sinks into one of the dark booths. She wants a shower, clean clothes, a nap, hot food. Discontentment rolls off her in waves.
Through a door in the back and up a rickety staircase is the band room, with a tub of beer on ice, and a table with three bags of chips and a bowl of crackers in single packets. Maxine is the first one there—all she has to move is a microphone. “Some hospitality,” she says from the locker-sized bathroom. She peers at herself in the mirror, rims her eyes with more black liner. “Kitty will go through that beer before the show even starts!” They are silent as Fanta shuffles up the stairs and looks around. Every wall surface is covered in graffiti—band tags and drawings of cocks, mostly deformed. She stretches out on one of the old couches, eyes closed.
The thought of putting on a bad show upsets Squeaky. She worries that the monitors won’t be loud enough. Kitty tends to turn her amp too high, and if she can’t hear the guitar or vocals it throws off her timing. Not to mention Kitty always breaks her D string which takes her forever to change.
Kitty finds her way upstairs. She opens a beer then shoves two in her shoulder bag. “Hey, that booze is for Fire Chicken too,” Squeaky admonishes. Kitty makes a face. “Man, you are such a brat.”
“A little Bukowski cherub,” Maxine agrees. Her voice is hoarse from nervous chain-smoking. Loud voices and laughter float up from downstairs. Fire Chicken has arrived, and Squeaky suggests the girls hover near the soundboard and make sure they get a turn.
Fanta heaves to her feet. “God,” she says. “It’s been a long Tuesday.”
Writing Sample from Skank (2011)
Pages 7-9
“It’s none of your business, BITCH!”
“I’m MAKING it my business!”
I’m jolted awake by two girls screaming at each other outside my window. I lie in bed, listening but not moving. It’s a late August morning, and summer feels like it’s barely hanging on.
“Get off my property!”
“YOU get off MY land!”
Their yelling is not enough to get me out of bed. I’m used to hearing loud people around here. Sleep is more important. I roll over and put the pillow over my head. But then someone starts banging on the front door and I jump out of bed.
“Mom?” I holler. No answer. “Mom, are you home?” The kitchen is empty and so is the living room. Downstairs in the basement apartment the two German shepherds won’t stop barking.
I pull back the curtain to see who’s knocking, and it’s a pissed off looking Native girl, around my age. She’s wearing a shirt that says Ovary Action, board shorts, skate shoes, and a faded denim vest covered in patches. Her long, black hair is curly and wild. Against my better judgement I take off the chain and open the door.
“Ummm, yeah?”
“Hey, sorry for knocking like the cops,” she says. “But I thought you should know you have some real creeps living downstairs.” It catches me off guard, though I’m not totally surprised to hear this.
The crusty French punks were already living in the basement when Mom and I moved here four months ago. They cram together in a surly bunch, with dirty caps and studded jackets. Mom went down and introduced herself after we settled in. I stayed upstairs and when she left I could hear them laughing at her. The scariest one is a skinny girl with messy dreads dyed a washed-out green. Their dogs are always barking.
“My name is Raven. Can I use your phone?”
Just then the skinny girl whips around the corner of the house. She’s wearing combat boots and a dingy tank top. Her bruised, bony legs stick out of denim shorts. She comes to a screeching halt when she sees Raven and I talking. The girl glares at us then stomps across the yard and out the front gate. “Just wait until Ashtray gets home,” she spits over her shoulder.
“Oh, what an anarchist you are,” Raven mocks. “You’re really gonna take down the government? You can’t even take care of your DOGS.”
We listen to the girl rant down the street, until I’m left standing in my fuzzy pajama bottoms. “What just happened here?”
“You should look downstairs.”
I’m scared but curious, too. “Hold on, just let me change. Uh, I’m Ariel.” I feel kind of awkward and close the door on her, the race to my room where I quickly pull on shorts and slip a bra on under my tank top.
When I come back Raven jokes, “I guess you don’t leave the house without those tied down, eh?” It’s a reference to my 38DD chest, and I shrug it off.
I lock the door and follow Raven past my mom’s little garden in the front yard and pitiful patch of grass for a lawn. Down the sloped path to the back with its scattered garbage, old tires, a mouldy couch with a lovely layer of mice droppings. Everything stinks. The German shepherds are going nuts.
Raven points to the window, and the barking gets even louder when I look inside. My stomach turns, and I understand why Raven’s so mad. The dogs are chained to a metal table in the kitchen, and the floor is covered in dog shit.
I don’t want to be here when Ashtray gets back.
Writing Sample from Some Girls Do
Pages 11-12
Hannah’s sleep is dark and slippery; blood and hard-boiled eggs. She wakes up cold when Gritboy staggers to bed and steals the covers. He looks like a giant fetus sleeping beside her and she covers his face in little bird kisses. Keep me warm, he mumbles. And she does.
Blue wakes up on her couch, fully clothed, checks for her keys and wallet.”You’re a whore,” she tells the purring cat as she puts a can of tuna on the floor. Her voice sounds like the back of a bar. She’ll have to call Carrotgirl; she can’t remember what happened the night before, but she’s pretty sure it was a good time.
Carrotgirl looks through her kitchen cupboards and pretends she lives in a grocery store. It’s an important day of thrift store shopping; she needs new polyester. She makes a list in crayon, gobbles breakfast chocolate and trembles on the edge of a breakdown. Her body is used to hangovers and it takes only minutes for the sugar to hit. Then she washes the smell of everyone’s cigarettes out of her hair.
Jezebel wakes up to old Metallica. She lights a smoke before she gets out of bed, then drinks two cups of coffee, wearing all black, while her hair dries. The world is the same, rain or shine, but she knows people look better in the dark. During the bike ride to her studio she focuses on her new painting. Jezebel thinks in red swirls, and cold, cold metal.
Eli wakes up and Jezebel is the thought that breaks with the light in his coffin-like room. He rubs his goatee then his belly and goes down. Early morning woody, chub-a-dub. He hears the clatter of pizza pans below, Tom Waits crooning, and the shouts of disgruntled employees. He stays in bed, lying with the light and the smell of Jezebel’s hair, where it is sweet a little longer.
Em eats yogurt and smokes a cigarette, blaring funk in the background. She stands at the mirror and checks for wrinkles, desperate to put the brakes on thirty. It’s Friday and all she really wants to do is get laid. Em is always waiting for something.
Jay can’t remember where he left his posse of monkey men or the name of the woman beside him, and doesn’t much care. He pockets a dollar on the floor, then sneaks out of the house like an early morning intruder. He begs a cigarette on the corner, then scratches his name in the bus stop, leaving marks that are easily forgotten.
Bernice wakes up alone, and she hates that.
Oliver gazes in the bathroom mirror and decides to remodel his sideburns. The night before he got drunk with a magazine editor who puked in the bathroom of a chi-chi Moroccan cafe. Today he has to make a poster, go to class, and attend two meetings with three balding men holding positions he wants. He debates which pair of underwear is his sexiest. Then he slings his leather satchel over his shoulder, thinks of the ways to get ahead.
Donna is an hour late for work but hits the snooze button. She yodels in the shower, thinks of a new color to dye her hair. She feels like an angel in maple syrup. She already has five o’clock plans: cheap beer and loud music. Make some money, have some fun. That’s all she has to do.
And finally, Lily, upstairs. She wakes up during her bath with the smell of white ginger and jasmine. She puts on her magic stockings and walks to the bakery, smiling. Back home she drinks tea and peruses the cryptic crossword. Her plants twinkle and she ignores her dishes. She is older than the rest but will play outside all day in the sunshine because she knows it doesn’t last. She will throw her arms around the urchins, pull each one out into the world.
It’s a whole new day and anything can happen.
Writing Sample Dirtbags
Pages 1-6
Vancouver is a place that can kill people with loneliness. Cold, gray rocks break up the beaches. It is a city full of powders. A city filled with rain.
Spider’s mother was the best-looking of four ugly sisters. She’d insisted Spider stay with her Aunt Clara in North Vancouver when she arrived in the city. At first Spider missed the sound of the small town she’d left, how the mountains were so quiet a person could hear right to the middle of them. But that was nothing like the lights, the traffic, the people crammed on every block. The noise slammed all the way down to her bones.
Spider spent her first few weeks in the city wandering downtown. When it rained no one bothered her as she walked the quiet, wet streets. She was a dark-haired girl with sad, delicate features and gold-brown eyes. The damp weather hurt the old break in her arm. She tried to blend into the city crowds, and sometimes took random bus rides across the bridges into downtown, sitting in the back just to look at people.
Aunt Clara painted terrible watercolours of horses during the day and watched soap operas like it was her job. She was a stick-thin woman on a disability cheque. Sometimes she worked cleaning houses. Clara’s apartment was small and everything smelled like cigarette smoke, even leftovers. She liked to recount her health problems—asthma, kidney and gallstones, bursitis, arthritis and chronic fatigue syndrome—to anyone who’d listen. Spider noticed Clara coughed loudly into the phone. For someone with lung problems she had no trouble sucking down a few packs a day. When Clara was feeling well she went to the track. At night she played bingo, or quarter slots at the casino. It pleased Spider that someone in her family could surprise her. Becoming a gambling addict was the most interesting thing her aunt had ever done. Clara had a lucky change purse, key chain, and a dried chicken wing. The guys knew her name in every pawnshop in town.
One night out of sheer boredom Spider went to bingo with Clara. She walked around the smoke-filled hall but the only person her age was a boy with scabs on his shaved head who kept turning to twitch in her direction. Spider sat with Clara and Clara’s neighbour Gerda. Gerda was a small, wrinkled Swede who wore puffy hats, and was always getting into car accidents. Her neck brace lay on the seat beside her. “I was telling Gerda that you’re looking for a place to live,” Clara said. “She has a daughter about your age—”
“My daughter is crazy,” Gerda said.
“She’s a very nice girl,” Clara argued.
“Nice yes,” Gerda said, dabbing her cards in a frenzy, “but last week she dyed her hair pink Pink! I said, ‘What are you doing? You look like a clown.”
“What’s her name?”
“Agnes.” Spider had a mental image of an obese girl in an apron who enjoyed scrubbing large pots. Her aunt said, “Why don’t you call right now?” Spider wondered if Clara wanted to get rid of her. She’d even dug out a quarter.
Spider went to the phone booth at the back of the bingo parlour and dialed. A girl picked up on the first ring. “Hello?”
“Hello, Agnes?”
“Who’s this?” There was instant suspicion in her voice.
“My name is Spider Mackenzie. I got your number from Gerda. She said you had a place to live. I mean, you need someone to live there.”
“Call me Blue.” Her voice meant business. “Don’t ever call me Agnes.”
“Okay.”
“I fucken hate that name.”
“Sorry.” There was an uproar in the bingo hall as they called the winning number for the meat draw.
“So…whaddya want?”
“Gerda said you had an extra room.”
“Hold on.” Blue muffled the phone for a minute and came back. “Well, you’d kind of have to see the place. My roommate Sally is fucked for money and the landlord hates us. If we’re late with the rent he tries to evict us. What’s your name again?”
“Spider.”
“Right. Spider. It a really small room. Do you have a lot of stuff?”
“Almost nothing.”
“You got a job?”
“Not right now, but I’ve got rent money. I just got to town.”
“From where?”
“Some little place you’ve never heard of.” The metal cord twisted and Spider wanted to hang up the phone then pictured the black duffel bag full of weed under the bed in Clara’s laundry room were she slept. I really have to move that, she thought. “I’ve got some money tied up in…investments right now.”
“Investments?” Blue laughed like she read her mind. “So, you know my mom?”
“Uh…from the bingo parlour.”
“Oh Christ,” Blue laughed. “Okay. Come by tomorrow and we’ll check you out.”
Blue gave her directions to an apartment on the eastside. It was an old wooden building with crooked front steps. There was a park across the street. The houses in the neighbourhood on the other side of the park looked even worse.
Spider buzzed number six and a tiny woman with short, dark hair and pink streaks came down the stairs. She wore faded jeans and a red bandana tied across her head. There was a silver hoop in her nose.
“I’m Blue,” she said when she opened the door. “You’re Spider?”
“Yeah. Hi.”
“You cool?”
“Sure,” Spider said. “I just took the cool bus here.”
PRESS
All Links (in red) open in a new window
Magazine Publications
- My Mom Shot Me in Vice Anthology
- On Ardessa’s Couch, Maxine Wants to Leave & Choking in Capilano Review Vol. 2 No. 35
Reviews
Five Little Bitches (2012)
Skank (2011)
Additional Praise
“McWhirter is a mistress of momentum…Dirtbags will take it’s place in any sensibly constructed future Canadian canon. This is a great book and a funny, moving, and entertaining read.”
-Globe and Mail, Nov 23, 2009
“Dirtbags is an easy and addictive read…poetic, yet breezy and unsentimental.”
-Globe and Mail, Dec 22, 2007
“Some Girls Do is a sharp, poetic glimpse into the yearning but hopelessly unfocused lives of a group of marginal urbanites…surprisingly, McWhirter makes them touching rather than alienating.”
-Elle Canada
“In tone and subject matter, McWhirter is revisiting the highly marketable terrain of Armistead Maupin and Candace Bushnell, the literature of urban subculture.”
-Event
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