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January 15, 2019On Re-Fusing CanLit--Or Why We Need Integrity, Community, and Roses
In a lot of the trauma memoirs I’ve been reading lately, I see the same metaphor used to describe the process of healing. You’ve likely heard it too. It compares healing from trauma to the Japanese ...
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April 23, 2017
Phoebe Wang on Poetry Exercises
Today's post on poets and poetry prompts features Toronto-based writer and educator Phoebe Wang. She was the 2015 Grand Prize winner of the Prism International Poetry Prize and her debut collection of ...
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May 31, 2019The Mindful Writer and the Desire To Publish
This is my last post with Open Book. I tried to approach my residency by writing about things that writers might find useful, or at least semi-entertaining. And I find it amusing that just like being ...
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October 31, 2018November writer-in-residence & Double Debut Author Brian Wilkinson on the Books That Shaped Him
Brian Wilkinson decided to start his publishing life with a bang -- this fall, he's got not one, but two books out with Blue Moon Publishers as a double debut: Paramnesia and Battledoors: The Golden ...
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November 02, 2016The WAR Series: Writers as Readers, with Katherine Ashenburg
Katherine Ashenburg's All the Dirt: A History of Getting Clean (Annick Press) gets pretty filthy, but it's still appropriate (and irresistible) for its middle grade audience, because this dirt is the ...
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June 26, 2020Finding Our Intentional Role in the Black Lives Matter Movement
As a Black professional in the publishing industry, I have been listening deeply to all of the conversations taking place around what folks can do to support the Black Lives Matter movement. Some of these ...
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May 10, 2022Genres You Didn’t Learn About in Kidlit 101
One of the most formative experiences in my development as a writer was working in a bookstore. For four glorious years I was the manager of the award-winning, much beloved Flying Dragon Bookshop in Toronto. ...
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February 13, 2019Writing Black Futures: I see you creating strong bonds
In February of 2018 I had curated an event at the Vancouver Public Library called “Where are you really from?” which I hoped would create a safe space for dialogue around what it means to identify ...
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February 27, 2019Excerpt! Experience the Power of Sue Farrell Holler's Cold White Sun
In Cold White Sun (Groundwood Books), a new young adult novel by Sue Farrell Holler, Tesfaye lives a happy life with his mother, sisters, and brother, safe behind the walls of their compound in Ethiopia. ...
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February 14, 2016Something Totally New: Part One of Stephen Thomas in Conversation
I first came across Stephen Thomas on Twitter. It was 2012 and I’d started doing this embarrassing YouTube show no one watched called A Chat With Jess. Steve was doing something similar while doing ...
