David Demchuk Writers in Residence Archives
David Demchuk was born and raised in Winnipeg and now lives in Toronto. He has been writing for theatre, film, television, radio, and other media for more than thirty years. His publications include the short-fiction cycle Seven Dreams, and the Lewis Carroll adaptation Alice in Cyberspace, and appearances in the anthologies Making, Out!, Outspoken, and Canadian Brash. His reviews, essays, interviews, and columns have appeared in such magazines as Toronto Life, Xtra, What! Magazine, and Prairie Fire, as well as the Toronto Star. Most recently, he has been a contributing writer for the digital magazine Torontoist. The Bone Mother is his first novel. It was recently long-listed for the prestigious Scotiabank Giller Prize.
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March 25, 2018
There's a lot to be said for not knowing what you're doing.
I’ve been writing professionally for nearly 40 years now, across a variety of media, and even now, every time I start a new project, it’s as if I’ve never written anything before in my life. I generally ...
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March 21, 2018
Some things I never thought I’d be or do.
It is good, when the moment presents itself, to take stock of your accomplishments and express gratitude for the things that have come your way—especially those things you never imagined would be part ...
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March 18, 2018
A picture prompts a thousand words.
Readers of The Bone Mother will know that a significant part of the book’s effectiveness lies in the beautiful, unsettling archival photographs that illustrate the sections that are sent in and around ...
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March 14, 2018
How to hold a launch.
There comes a time in a writer’s life when, if you are very lucky, you will be published (frequently but not always a book) and you may feel the need to draw attention to it with some kind of hoohah. ...
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March 11, 2018
Escape from reality: Conventions, conferences and expos.
I haven’t spoken about it a whole lot, but just a few months before the The Bone Mother’s release, my mother died. While not unexpected, it was unpleasant, and of course brought a lot of memories ...
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March 08, 2018
Write well, write better, write often.
In my introductory Q&A I gave an abbreviated account of how I write, and in particular how I wrote my first novel. I always find other writers’ processes interesting, so I thought I’d talk about ...
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March 04, 2018
Oh, the horror!
Here's some self-gossip for you: A few years ago, in the months leading up to the release date of my book, I was pleased to take part in Naked Heart, Toronto’s LGBTQ literary festival, and to read as ...
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March 01, 2018
So here's the story.
People always ask, so here’s the story: On January 1, 2015, I started writing a new play titled The Thimble Factory. I knew a few things about it when I began—it would be a collection of monologues, ...