Ontario book news, interviews and more

The 2017 RBC Taylor Prize Shortlist Gets Personal

Today saw the announcement of the 2017 shortlist for the RBC Taylor Prize, and this time it's personal -- the 12 title longlist was whittled down to just five titles, each of which tells a very personal ...

Hearing the Muse

I was always fond of my teachers but one couldn’t help but love Mary di Michele. I realize that my impressions and recollections are fifteen years old but so what? Of all my professors at Concordia, ...

The Dirty Dozen, with Daphna Rabinovitch

Everybody wishes they had a friend like Daphna Rabinovitch. Just imagine being the willing guinea pig of an award-winning ex-executive pastry chef and Canadian Living's Associate Food Editor.You can ...

Found in Translation

Kumar Sivasubramanian has lived stretches of his life on at least three different continents. We met through a closed Facebook group (before I was kicked off by a sour-faced Dubliner) that effectively ...

The WAR Series: Writers as Readers, with JonArno Lawson

JonArno Lawson The Hobo's Crowbar (Porcupine's Quill) is an infectiously rhythmic collection of children's poetry, filled to the brim with Lawson's trademark (and award-winning) whimsy and wit. The playfulness ...

Featured Video: Book Trailer for Blood Brothers by Colleen Nelson

Colleen Nelson's Blood Brothers (Dundurn Press) follows best friends and graffiti artists Jakub and Lincoln, whose close-as-brothers lives diverge when Jakub is whisked away on a scholarship to a private ...

Dispatches From Berlin

This is a departure for the series. Lutz Göllner lives in Berlin, Germany. We met online due to our mutual appreciation of Frank Miller's work. Lutz has met Miller and translated some of his writing ...

Writing Through Pain

Carlyn Zwarenstein, in Opium Eater: The New Confessions, fuses memoir, reflective inquiry, cultural journalism, and literary investigation to look at opiates and what they have done for her. She is a ...

Spider-Man, Spider-Man, Does Whatever a Writer Says He Can

Holy Christmas miracle, Spider-Man! A true miracle from the Ghost of Jack Kirby! I don't believe in God but I do believe in the cigar smoking Ghost of Jack Kirby. Around Christmas, Facebook suggested ...

Mansplaining / Hydroplaning

Mark Sampson does not have luxuriant locks of hair like his Biblical namesake, but Sampson does have the strength of twenty... writers. He is an avid writer of fiction and employs a rigorous practice. ...