PHOTOGRAPHY BY MICHAEL BANASIAK
PERSONAL ESSAY
My first experience of the semantic headaches self-deception creates when working in a literary genre (creative non-fiction) that aims to capture the nuance and subtlety of life – the real “truth,” as it were – happened in 2005. It was Toronto’s “summer of the gun,” and my assignment was to interview victims of gun violence and write about what it’s like to be shot.