In Emily Pohl-Weary’s new YA mystery “How to be Found”, a Toronto teen risks all for her chosen family

Acclaimed author and arts educator Emily Pohl-Weary has just released her newest YA novel, How to Be Found, which is published by Arsenal Pulp Press. In it, Pohl-Weary uses the mystery of a missing inner-city teenager to explore the complexities of the teenage life through themes of friendship, survival, vulnerability, and the power of chosen families.

Pohl-Weary is both prolific and multi-talented. Her previous books include the novel A Girl Like Sugar, the YA novel Not Your Ordinary Wolf Girl, and the middle-grade novel Strange Times at Western High. Her poetry collection Ghost Sick won the Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry. It is about a tragedy that happened near her childhood home in Parkdale: her baby brother was shot, and his best friend was killed. This is the incident that inspired her to start writing workshops for street-involved Parkdale youth who needed a creative outlet for what they were experiencing. Her biography Better to Have Loved: The Life of Judith Merril (co-authored with Merril, who is her grandmother) won a Hugo Award and was shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award. 

In addition to running writing workshops for over a decade, she worked in a variety of roles within the publishing industry. For instance, she was the editor of the now-defunct Kiss Machine magazine. She was a copyeditor. And she was an Acquisitions Editor for high school textbooks. She holds a PhD in Adult Education and Community Development from OISE – University of Toronto, and she currently lives in Vancouver, BC on Musqueam Territory, where she teaches at the University of British Columbia’s School of Creative Writing.

How to Be Found centres on sixteen-year old Michie and her lifelong friend Trissa, who are being raised by their best-friend, activist single mothers in a shared, rundown duplex. Once inseparable, the girls now face a growing divide. While introverted Michie immerses herself in the pages of A Girl’s Guide to Murder, the extroverted Trissa dances in the city’s hottest nightclub. Then one night, Michie awakens to discover Trissa gone, leaving only a mysterious note. 

When the case is dismissed by the police as a reckless partygoer meeting a grim fate, the two mothers crumble under fear and despair. But Michie resolves to find Trissa with the help of her crush Anwar. The duo’s search takes them into perilous territory: from the shadows of Trissa’s exclusive nightclub to dimly lit alleys, the online sex industry, and the remote countryside. And committed to rescuing her chosen sister, Michie puts herself in great danger as she unravels Trissa’s hidden truths in an environment of unyielding authority figures, dubious characters, and a serial killer who is targeting young girls. 

“It’s hard enough just to survive the teen years,” Pohl-Weary notes. But it’s even more difficult for girls to grow up in the inner city, so creating an authentic portrayal of this struggle was a major goal of How to Be Found. Set against the backdrop of Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood, which is where Pohl-Weary grew up and worked, the novel paints a personally-inspired picture of the challenges faced by young girls: “When I was Michie’s age, Paul Bernardo was raping and killing girls around Toronto. When I was 12, Alison Parrott was kidnapped not far from where I lived and was later found dead. There were other young girls killed, too,” she recalls. “It felt like an especially confusing and scary time to be a girl. That didn’t stop me from doing the usual things teens do, but it added a backdrop of tension. While we were told ‘girls can do anything,’ we were also terrified to walk alone at night.” 

Pohl-Weary draws inspiration equally from her teen years and her more recent employment:  “Having worked with teens for many years, I know that girls and trans people are just as vulnerable these days. So I tried to imagine girls like me and my friends living in 2023.” As a consequence, her Toronto feels more dangerous than we are accustomed to: “The city as seen through their eyes feels important. So often, Toronto is turned into more glamorous places in films and TV, but I wanted to depict the way it feels to me.” 

But How to Be Found is more than a gripping mystery about the perils of the city. It’s also a heartfelt exploration of chosen family, a theme which is especially close to Pohl-Weary’s heart. “For me, family is not defined by blood, but by love, trust, support for each other, and shared experiences,” she explains. “My family is definitely not traditional. My parents have partnered and repartnered multiple times. Once, my stepfather said something like, ‘This family never loses people. It just expands to allow more people into it’. And that’s true. I look nothing like two of my siblings, who are much younger than me. Yet they are my brother and sister. And when I was a teen, my girlfriends were the most important people in my life, even when we were fighting. So I knew I wanted to show that kind of closeness between Michie and Trissa.”

Asked to name her favourite character in the novel, she admits to having a “soft spot for Trissa, who’s sexy and mouthy and more than a bit feral”. By contrast, she found it most difficult to write Trissa’s mom. And reflecting on her overall writing process, she admits that, although How to Be Found is not a long novel, she “got stuck several times”– thanks to the characters and the intensity of the themes being explored. “The hardest scene to write was the one in which Trissa and Anwar go to a club and get evicted by the bouncers. And the ending was also difficult to write, because I wanted it to say so much without hitting the reader over the head.” 

In addition to being a novelist and poet, Pohl-Weary is also a champion of thoughtful book reviews. She founded Young Adulting, a platform dedicated to reviews of young adult and children’s literature. (When we discuss book recommendations, she immediately offers two top-of-mind personal recommendations: Matt Bell’s Refuse to Be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts, and Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki’s graphic novel Roaming.)

In How to Be Found, Pohl-Weary invites readers to navigate the intricacies of adolescence alongside her memorable characters. And along the way, she reminds us of the power of connection, the strength of chosen families, and the courage that it takes to be found . . . in a world where it’s all too easy to lose our way.

© Arpita Ghosal, SesayArts Magazine, 2023