Jowita Bydlowska Writers in Residence Archives
Jowita Bydlowska was born in Warsaw, Poland, and moved to Canada as a teen. She is the author of the bestselling memoir Drunk Mom. A journalist and fiction writer, she lives in Toronto, Canada.
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May 30, 2017
Ayelet Tsabari's photographs
Hello,Long time no see (well, a few days but that's eons in Open-Book time). I'm reading a really great book of short stories called Lemons by Kasia Jaronczyk and you should all run out and get it. The ...
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May 26, 2017
writing & what & why
Writing is a strange and lonely experience where you spend a lot of time in your head trying to create worlds that weave in and out of reality.Writing is an exhilarating experience when it goes well. ...
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May 24, 2017
Paul Vermeersch & The Holy Order
I don’t need a special space to write. I don’t need candles, or a window to look out onto a body of water or a forest. There’s nothing interesting on my desk, no amethysts. I believe that in the ...
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May 22, 2017
Gotta read
The way it was, shapes of letters in the alphabet were like suggestions of different parts of insects. That was in the beginning when I first became aware of them, how different they were—the construction ...
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May 19, 2017
Unstupid
It's been stressful checking my Facebook feed for the past couple of weeks now. This is because my community has gone a bit berserk over an editorial in The Writer's Trust of Canada magazine, Write, that ...
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May 17, 2017
Michael Winter's collages
I spent half of March writing a very long abstract (1,200 words) for an essay I was going to present at some conference but I just heard back today and they said no. Two weeks of work for nothing? (Not ...
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May 15, 2017
Monopoly on memory
Recently on Instagram, I saw a picture of Warszawa Centralna railway station and I was overcome by the smell and the sound the picture evoked. It smelled of damp concrete, earth, dirt and engine oil, ...
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May 12, 2017
Sit How You Want
What I want to quickly talk about is outlines. I hate them but I think in fiction they’re a must. I hate them because they mean all this extra work and they stop me from diving into the rainbow pool ...
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May 11, 2017
The Poet Series
“I don’t like bad dialogue.” “What kind of dialogue?” “Shit that sounds like no one would actually say it.” “Like what?” “Like expository dialogue, ...
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May 09, 2017
Who am I?
A few years ago, I became aware of how to stroke my penis. It was so natural—because it was mine, I didn’t have to guess how it liked to be touched; I just knew. And I knew how to fuck with it. I ...
