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March 09, 2021
A love letter (to books)
The first quote-unquote serious novel I read was One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. My eighth grade teacher set down a box at the front of the classroom and, in a seemingly ...
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April 06, 2023Read an Excerpt from Richard Sanger's Final Poetry Collection, Way to Go
Facing a terminal diagnosis, poet, playwright, and translator Richard Sanger had to decide how to use his final days – and how he felt about the end. In time, he decided to do what he'd been doing ...
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March 13, 2017My final two columns: Part One
After nearly a decade, my time as a columnist for Open Book comes to a close. According to my email folder, it was May 2009 when Amy Logan Holmes first approached me with the idea of submitting pieces ...
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June 11, 2018
Tweet Tweet: A City’s Past & Present: Remapping Vancouver
@poetchelene: After reading and researching about the setting in my novel I felt compelled to recognize the city as a character. #hogansalleyfactorfiction “Junie stood on her balcony overlooking the ...
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December 14, 2020Contest: Reconnect with the Land with Inspiring Nonfiction from Wolsak & Wynn
It's all too easy to take the land we live on for granted, to forget how much it gives us, and who has lived on it and taken care of it. But as we hunker down for winter, and the land enters its chilly ...
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October 24, 2013Writing Fatherhood
What do we know about pregnancy1.I shall begin, by speaking. Incubate, introduce a glossary. Just on the tongue. Unpaginated.2.Something is growing, inside. Occupant. Connects whole milk to healthy industry. ...
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November 22, 2018Calling All Aspiring Authors: Never Ask an Illustrator to Illustrate Your Picture Book for Free
A few weeks ago, I was in a local tavern with some friends—a few of them are professional illustrators. They were drinking overpriced mocktails and commiserating about the emails they get from aspiring ...
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March 01, 2022Happy St. David's Day
Happy St. David’s Day!St. David is the patron saint of Wales, and every March 1st I make Welsh cakes. A Welsh cake is like a pancake –– you cook it on a griddle. It’s also like a scone –– ...
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October 24, 2016
A Poetry Bookshop in Toronto
An exciting thing happened in Toronto while I was away. Jeff Kirby opened a poetry bookshop, knife|fork|book, in Rick’s Café in Kensington Market. Having missed the October 6th grand opening, I raced ...
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May 01, 2024Read an Excerpt from NORMA, the New Novel by Sarah Mintz
After decades of marriage and domestic responsibility, Norma has lost her husband and gained a freedom that she perhaps isn't quite prepared to handle. She goes all the way in, delving into some of the ...
