Columnists

Defending your writing

Ever since I can remember, I wanted to be a writer. As a kid, I read everything in my library from A – Z. I was the secretary of the Library Club and loved my after-school gig of sorting the books according ...

An interview with Jaime Forsythe

“How I fit myself into my work is something I’m still figuring out.”Jamie Forsythe’s I Heard Something finds mystery in the common place. Domestic scenes take on a surrealistic quality as the ...

On writers, politics, and when to just stop talking

Once upon a time, before the age of social media, Canlit was inclusive and kind, and political differences were settled amicably over whisky in private festival hospitality suites and the kind of dark ...

How to Make $3000 a Month Writing Children’s Books: A Case for Day Jobs

When I was a teen, I thought that every children’s author got to sit at home alone and undisturbed, joyfully tapping away at a computer all day and night. Before I went off to university, I learned ...

On Literary Festivals and Crossed Boundaries

As a writer of creative nonfiction—in particular, one who draws very heavily from my own life and experiences—I’ve learned it’s important to determine whether something I want to write about is ...

Why It’s Okay If You Haven’t Finished Your First Book Yet

I thought I would finish my first novel by the time I turned 25.I laugh at the absurdity of that now. But in my early 20s, I believed it when people told me that anything was possible with hard work and ...

An interview with Klara du Plessis

“It’s Very Common for me to Constantly Switch Codes While Thinking.”The poems in Klara du Plessis’ debut collection, Ekke, treat translation like ekphrasis, exploring in English the impossibilities ...

Scarborough: A Setting

When I was growing up in Scarborough, I loved it and hated it. I don’t think it’s an uncommon feeling towards places where we grew up. But there are things about coming of age in a suburb as a racialized ...

Why Do We Keep Picture Book Authors and Illustrators Apart? - or How to Play Well With Others

I completely underestimated how emotional the whole process of creating a picture book would be. When my first picture book was being published, I became a horrible self-involved troll-person. I couldn’t ...

On the business of writing

In 2002, when I formed my writing group (still going strong!) with June Hutton and Mary Novik, we made a promise that we would always, always share our experiences with the business of writing—the shadowy ...