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April 12, 2018
Mark Frutkin on Describing Characters and Writing a Literal Devil's Advocate
In Mark Frutkin's The Rising Tide (Porcupine's Quill), it's 1769 in Venice and things are getting pretty strange. From a man with a skeleton strapped to his back to a courtesan with odd stigmata marks, ...
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October 23, 2018
"A Rough and Guttural Music" Adrian Michael Kelly on Writing His Short Story Collection, The Ambassador of What
13 years ago, Adrian Michael Kelly published his Alberta Book Award-nominated first novel, Down Sterling Road, with Coach House Books. Both readers and author expected more would follow soon, but ...
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July 12, 2018
"Here Might Be a Path Out of Myself" Steve McOrmond on Discovering Poetry
Steve McOrmond's Reckon (Brick Books) is his first book since the widely-praised The Good News About Armageddon was published in 2010. Reckon is worth the wait, packed with poems that balance wit ...
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June 28, 2018
July 2018 WIR Daniel Perry on Favourite Reads & Biggest Literary Influences, from O'Brien to du Maurier
You can almost feel the dusty air of Currie Township in Daniel Perry's stories. The desire to escape the rotting barns and crumbling roadways is palpable, and captured viscerally in the character of ...
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December 10, 2018
"I Need to be Deep Inside Their Hearts and Minds" Fran Kimmel on Building the Fascinating Characters in No Good Asking
Moving with family to an idyllic farmhouse sounds like a charming idea, but in practice, behind the scenes, Ellie and Eric Nyland's family is unravelling.Fran Kimmel's No Good Asking (ECW Press) opens ...
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November 19, 2018
Some of the Best Books Come With Pictures
A friend of mine once told me that his favourite form of reading is instruction manuals. Seriously. Anything he could get his hands on that went through the process of describing how something worked ...
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November 26, 2018
Groundwood Books Celebrates 40 Years of Innovative Children's Publishing
In Canada, Groundwood Books is synonymous with the highest quality books for young readers. Their track record is studded with innumerable awards (including the Bologna Prize for Best Children’s Publisher ...
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January 09, 2019
Poet Susan Gillis on Landscapes, Ecologies of the Heart, and Czeslaw Milosz
Partly inspired by a memorable line in a Czeslaw Milosz poem, Susan Gillis' new collection Yellow Crane (Brick Books) is sharply observed and lovingly rendered, casting an observant and incisive eye ...
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January 31, 2019
A Title Should Be a "Dream in Which the Work Lives": Talking with our February 2019 writer-in-residence Deanna Young
Ottawa poet Deanna Young is the author of four collections of poetry, which have earned her praise and nominations for numerous prizes including the Trillium Book Award for Poetry, the Ottawa Book Award, ...
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February 06, 2019
"From the First Word, it Flowed" Debut Novelist David Albertyn on his Gritty Las Vegas Pageturner, Undercard
When three childhood friends are unexpectedly reunited in David Albertyn's debut novel Undercard (House of Anansi), the wild consequences are far beyond what any of them could have foreseen. Tyron Shaw ...