Search
-
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 ...
-
August 31, 2024Jennifer Maruno Sends a Young Witch and Her Rodent Sidekick on an Adventure in Broom for Two
Prolific children's author Jennifer Maruno may be familiar to readers of Open Book. In fact, as recently as last week, another title written by Maruno was featured on the site.This time we're sharing ...
-
June 13, 2016Dismantling Jane Jordan’s Library
Throughout the process of distributing ten bins of books, chapbooks and other literary materials once owned by Ottawa poet Jane Jordan (1926-2007), there’s a slight guilt attached to dismantling her ...
-
December 21, 2021"I Did Not Choose to Become a Poet" Nduka Otiono on Ghost Writing Love Letters, Negotiating with Poems, & More
DisPlace: The Poetry of Nduka Otiono (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, edited by Peter Midgley with an afterword by Chris Dunton) gathers powerhouse poems from one of Canada's most insightful and timely ...
-
September 12, 2019Marie-Louise Gay's Celebration of Young Readers' Imaginations in Fern and Horn: "You Have Your Unique Wonderful Way of Seeing the World"
In Fern and Horn (Groundwood Books), the titular twins Fern and Horn might be small, but their imaginations are huge. Fern loves drawing and helps Horn unlock his love of drawing too - the only trouble ...
-
March 14, 2023"We Approach the Mystery [of Art] in Bafflement... Not in Sureness": A Conversation with Award-Winning Poet Kate Cayley
Decorated multi-genre writer Kate Cayley's new poetry collection, Lent (forthcoming from Book*hug Press) is one of her most exciting books yet, and that is saying something, given that her previous ...
-
June 24, 2015
Why I Read Obituaries
To get out of a dry writing spell several years ago, I had to take drastic measures. To take drastic measures meant calling my writer friend. In Ontario.She was shocked but not surprised when I called ...
-
February 21, 2023Sharon Frayne on Exploring the Power of Disconnecting in Her Marathon-Competition Winning YA Debut
The story of how Sharon Frayne's debut young adult novel The Sound of a Rainbow (Latitude 46 Publishing) came to be is almost as remarkable as the story within the pages. Frayne captured first place in ...
-
May 25, 2021"I Felt Like I Had Found a Place" Poet Vanessa Shields on the High Highs and Low Lows of a Life Spent Writing & Publishing
Every family story contains at least one unforgettable character. A person who inspires those who come after with his or her strength, struggles, and legacy. For poet Vanessa Shields, it was her grandmother, ...
-
June 02, 2016On Writing, with Nadia Bozak
Nadia Bozak's gorgeous collection of linked short stories, Thirteen Shells (House of Anansi), is drawing tons of praise, including comparisons to Alice Munro, for its deft rendering of a young girl coming ...