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March 21, 2018On writing politically, or how not to make your fiction sound like a lecture
When I started writing my most recent novel, The Conjoined, I began with the idea of subverting classic crime fiction, something that I thought would be a fun bookish game. What if I could write a literary ...
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December 29, 2023When Life Influences Form
What’s the best form for your next writing project? Often, this is decided by the sort of thing you want to write. Your sprawling epic fantasy idea likely won’t work as a short story, for example. ...
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January 03, 2024"A Paradigm Shift That Has Become Entirely Normalized" Read an Excerpt from Gary Barwin's Essay Collection, Imagining Imagining
Renaissance man Gary Barwin has exhibited art, written music, and published in virtually every literary genre, to acclaim that has included nominations for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and Governor General's ...
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July 11, 2023Keep Pride Month Going with an Excerpt from Jake Byrne's Witty & Fiery Collection, Celebrate Pride with Lockheed Martin
Bodies, sex, drugs, queer love, capitalism, war – there's pretty much nothing that Jake Byrne won't tackle in their poetry. With back-to-back collections coming out this year and next, CanLit lovers ...
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July 31, 2016Service Industry Hell (Part 6): Service Industry Heaven!
A lot of the inspiration for my new book, Congratulations On Everything, came from the things I saw while working in bars, restaurants, and hotels, and from the experiences of friends who did the same. ...
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July 08, 2024The Magic of Letter Writing
Summer challenge: Write a letter to your favourite authorWhen I was in Grade 3, I loved Jean Little’s books. So I did what I always do: I wrote her a letter. I told her all of my favourite things about ...
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August 07, 2016Introducing Zalman Nehemiah Razovsky … Maybe.
I’ve been wrestling with it for years, and I pondered it a bit in my essay “How Jew You Do?” in Further Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer (Anvil Press, 2015). Should I change my name — Ross ...
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May 24, 2023SJ Okemow on Her Heartwarming Debut Picture Book's Unconventional Path to Publication
The humble dandelion rarely gets much love, often cited as a nuisance weed that spreads easily and takes over. But the hardy little plant has many lessons to teach us, and in SJ Okemow's Âmî Osâwâpikones (Annick ...
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April 17, 2019Creative Life
I was asked to give a keynote address at the launch of the student literary journal, Scarborough Fair at the University of Toronto Scarborough. The theme was “The Creative Life”. As their Writer in ...
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March 13, 2021
Permission to dream
When I started writing, I didn’t understand the invisible work. The models of labour I was most familiar with—whether in a coffee shop, at a hotel, in a firehall, or at a construction site—were, ...
