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December 20, 2023
The Transition to Short Stories (as a poet)
I’ve spent years now honing my craft as a poet. I know how to edit individual poems, as well as to approach and rewrite entire manuscripts. Why did the need to do the same in fiction seem so daunting ...
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November 27, 2023
I think I have a manuscript
This is what I said to myself about four years into publishing my poems in journals, magazines, and through chapbooks. Sifting through folders to put poems into a single Word document, I saw the page ...
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October 02, 2023
Book Launch Season, Part 2: Being an Audience Member
In the first part of “Book Launch Season,” I talked about how to enter this period of time as an author. Writers are (I hope) readers. As a poet especially, going to readings and sitting there as ...
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September 12, 2023
Roshan James on Creating Poetry & Awareness About Canada's Deadliest Terrorist Attack
Just months ago, a CBC News report confirmed that nearly 90% of Canadians have little to no knowledge about the worst terror attack in our country's history, the 1985 Air India Bombing, in which a passenger ...
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August 25, 2023
Book Launch Season, Part One: Being an Author
In the book world, the arrival of fall usually means the arrival of a whole host of new books to look forward to. And with new books comes book launches, tours, and celebrations—and sometimes it can ...
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July 27, 2023
Things I Didn’t Know About Residencies
Before 2023, I could barely describe what “residency” meant in the realm of writing and art. A residency felt like it was reserved for someone with more writing experience, more books, and just more ...
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April 28, 2023
Literary Secrets
And this is my last post as Writer-in-Residence with Open Book, and I’m grateful to you for reading and revelling in poetry-world with me. I didn’t know how to start this, or how to quantify the month’s ...
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April 25, 2023
Building an Author Website
You don’t need an author website, but it has helped me to have one. The more you start to publish, the more people will want to contact you for interviews, solicitations, and event invitations—and ...
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April 21, 2023
Things you didn’t know you could get funding for
There really is a huge world of funding out there beyond grants for individual writing projects. These professional development grants offer anywhere between $1000 to $12,000 (or even more) for numerous ...
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April 18, 2023
Writing the same poem as everyone else, over and over
If you’re in Southern Ontario you might have spent last week soaking in the sun, switching from sweatpants to shorts, and strolling along a river, lake, stream, etc. I walked along my usual path around ...