Search
-
June 17, 2024Lunar Forests, Interplanetary War, and Cyberpunk Heroes Are Just the Beginning in Ben Berman Ghan's Debut Novel
How does an author ponder the important questions of our time while creating a speculative, fictional world that hums with intelligence and humanity? It's a tall order, but one that author Ben Berman ...
-
January 16, 2019Lynne Golding on Weaving Family History into Her Historical Brampton Saga
In Lynne Golding's The Innocent (Blue Moon Publishers), there's a secret in Jessie's family. For some reason, unlike all their neighbours in turn of the century Brampton, her father won't allow anyone ...
-
December 14, 2016Madeleine Thien on Language, Music, and Asking the Unaskable
2016 has been Madeleine Thien's year. It's not often that the world of writing and publishing can agree so enthusiastically on a writer's achievements, but Thien's breathtaking Do Not Say We Have Nothing (Knopf ...
-
April 09, 2014
Madness
Catching up on the frippery of “Downton Abbey,” I enjoyed Maggie Smith’s trenchant Dowager Countess of Grantham listening to her son wax a mite lyrically about land and history and then exclaiming ...
-
May 07, 2017
Madness
I have a lot of neuroses and phobias when it comes to being a writer. We started with the case of WB but that’s only the tip of iceberg (how to avoid clichés is right below the tip of the iceberg).There ...
-
August 17, 2023Maggie Knaus Shares 2 Strange & Happy Moments from the Long Journey to Creating Her Stunning Debut Picture Book
Eleanor was born under a spectacular harvest moon. As it hung low in the sky, her grandfather made a promise: that wherever they both were, and however far apart that may be, they would look up at the ...
-
July 16, 2018
Make It New (Again)!
I was shocked a few years ago when, in a workshop I attended, a thirty-something writer who had already published a book (and has since gone on to publish two much more successful ones) dismissed the ...
-
February 20, 2024Make-believe and Melodrama Create Comedy in the New Picture Book, The Only Lonely Fairy
Make-believe and melodrama collide to create a heartfelt comedy in The Only Lonely Fairy (Pajama Press), the new picture book by Lana Button, illustrated by Peggy Collins. A story about emotional ...
-
February 11, 2022Making a skating rink, and other tricks for stepping away from a work-in-progress
On a particularly cold Friday morning, I piled my kids in a car with snow pants and skates and a pile of books and we headed to a cottage rental. We all were desperate for a change of scenery, and I was ...
-
March 18, 2022Making the Leap: Why Writing Programs Matter Right Now
I’ve been on campus exactly once since March 2020, during the height of one of the province’s lockdowns, to pack up my old office at Humber College’s Lakeshore Campus. I was leaving my post as the ...