Ontario book news, interviews and more

Bobcaygeon

This is a damned weird country. Culturally and geographically, it has some peculiarities which rest not off to the side but squarely in the middle of our shared national consciousness. There is a rib ...

Form Blurbs for Your Friends' Books

"From page one, this book had me enraptured. I could barely wait to turn to page two. I can say with complete certainty that pages 3-10 were equally incredible, and think we can all agree that's all you ...

The Entitled Interview with Nick Thran

Trillium award-winning poet Nick Thran's Mayor Snow (Nightwood Editions) delves into questions of power — personal and civic, poetic and political. Using parody, dark humour, and lines imbued with his ...

Domestic Epic: an Interview with Ken Sparling

To fully appreciate the books of CanLit anomaly Ken Sparling, it helps to think of his work as a single statement told from different perspectives. Each book is a unique view, yet every time we meet a ...

The Long Odds

I used to keep a Word document detailing where I'd sent what. Now it's a Google spreadsheet, colour coded, sortable. It lists the titles of completed stories and their word counts, tells me where I sent ...

On Writing, with J. Scott Kenney

Freemasonry has played a significant role in as a social history, but few non-members know much about the organization's history and operations, often lumping it into the media-hyped category of "secret ...

2016 CBC Shakespeare Selfie Writing Challenge Winners Talk Beyond and Trump

CBC's 2016 Shakespeare Selfie writing challenge asked Canadian students to write a monologue or soliloquy in the style of the Bard about a subject of current social, political, or economic interest. Each ...

Work

In January the flu raced through our house. It hitched a ride home from school on one child – one of the senior kindergarteners or the fourth grader, who can say which? – and in turn each of them ...

Kid Lit Can, with Susan Hughes: The Magic, The Wonder - Chatting with YA Fantasy Authors (Part 2)

Today, I continue my conversation about writing fantasy with these four amazingly talented and experienced YA authors: Lena Coakley, Alyxander Harvey, Nicole Luiken, and Arthur Slade. Please feel free ...

Faking It

Writers' early careers are characterized by a sort of inconsistent confidence, a herky-jerky belief in themselves and their divinely appointed mission interspersed with paralyzing instances of clarity ...