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April 18, 2017The In Character Interview, with Leslie Shimotakahara
Leslie Shimotakahara's After the Bloom (Dundurn Press) has been praised as "personal and entrancing, unflinchingly shining a light on [a] difficult part of history" and "a sweeping page turner". The ...
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November 13, 2018"Characters Come to Me Already Having Lives of Their Own" Kagiso Lesego Molope on her Poignant South African LGBT Novel
In Kagiso Lesego Molope's Such a Lonely, Lovely Road (Mawenzi House), Kabelo Mosala is the perfect child. His parents love to show him off, from his early school achievements to when he brings home ...
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April 30, 2020Poets in Profile: Catherine Owen on Accepting the Muse, Tennyson's "The Eagle", and the Politics of Poetry
After addiction claimed the life of her spouse in 2010, poet Catherine Owen packed up and moved into an apartment on Vancouver's Fraser River. During her morning walks along the shore, she found in its ...
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February 02, 2017The Proust Questionnaire, with Paul Benedetti
To paraphrase Tolstoy, it seems fair to say that each funny family is funny in its own way. The Hamilton Spectator's Paul Benedetti runs with that idea in his hilarious portrait of modern family life, You ...
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June 28, 2021Video: Cristina Sandu Introduces Her First Canadian Novel, The Union of Synchronized Swimmers, on a Sunny Helsinki Evening
Cristina Sandu is a novelist with a unique relationship with her translator—in that, unlike most writers published in translation, she translated her own novel, in this case from Finnish to English. ...
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July 16, 2018Why It’s Okay If You Haven’t Finished Your First Book Yet
I thought I would finish my first novel by the time I turned 25.I laugh at the absurdity of that now. But in my early 20s, I believed it when people told me that anything was possible with hard work and ...
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August 03, 2021In Praise of Editors
I believe the most important relationship in publishing is between the author and the editor. It’s a fundamental partnership that turns ideas into prose and drafts into polished works. When the editing ...
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October 21, 2020The casting call
“Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head and … as you get older, you become more skillful in casting them.” — Gore VidalThe characters who show up in my stories are truly a mixed ...
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February 26, 2021Grinding Out a New Novel
Writing a novel is a grind. It’s an arduous, meticulous, and often repetitive process that can take years. There’s the actual typing of words onto the page, and then come the edits and rewrites, which ...
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May 16, 2020Readings...that feeling never goes away.
I always get that feeling right before reading my work in public. You may know it: the urge to simultaneously faint, throw up, and run out of the room. My first few readings were terrifying. I was fortunate ...
