Through Life Rattle Press and the Life Rattle radio program, Life Rattle searches out, edits, records, broadcasts and publishes experience based prose by new writers from a variety of communities in the Toronto area.

On Sunday morning, February 6, 1988, Arnie Achtman broadcast Life Rattle on CKLN 88.1 FM for the first time.

In 1995, we launched Life Rattle Press, a nonprofit publisher of high-quality, editions of stories by new writers.

Life Rattle provides a system of support and encouragement to new writers. Our loose collective of writers and editors offers professional-level editing to people who normally might not be able to access or even know about such services. We also offer instruction and support to writers recording their writing for the first time. Life Rattle also helps gifted writers to access grant support and other means of publication and recognition.

Life Rattle presents an alternative to a culture where passive spectatorism is the fate of many who come to feel that expression is an opportunity reserved for an elite few. Life Rattle stresses the expression of censored experience, experience that schools and other guardians of “culture” ignore or marginalize.

The stories of Life Rattle are the stories of our city and its cultures. Storytelling is a way of making ourselves known to others and of making ourselves known to ourselves.

Arnie Achtman
Guy Allen