Ola Szczecinska was born in Warsaw, Poland, and moved to Canada with her family in 1984. She earned an MA in History from the University of Toronto and is a graduate of the Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. She’s been published in Narrative Magazine, Geist, SFU’s Emerge, and most recently her short story “Pulled Pork, Brisket, Polish Ham” has been published nationally in “BETTER NEXT YEAR: An Anthology of Christmas Epiphanies,” which hit Amazon’s Top 10 Best Sellers List for Canadian Literature in December 2023. During the interview Ola gives a reading and we talk about her incredible true story of what it means to fall vs live free. Ola shares the time she was homeless in Vancouver, living in her car over Christmas. How a chain of events, from all her possessions in her car being stolen, to almost dying in a car accident, and a chance encounter with a police officer in a stolen car she'd bought by mistaken, changed her perspective in life. Ola’s story is about what happens when our lives get turned upside down. And what it takes for us to find a way to rise, and try again.