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September 15, 2014On the Idea of a Secret—a Conversation with Rhonda Douglas
Part 2: Q&A with Rhonda DouglasSandra Ridley: How do you integrate the direct and personal ‘I’ into your poetry? Or does the ‘I’ tend to be an ‘other’?Rhonda Douglas: I have used “I” ...
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July 31, 2018On writers, politics, and when to just stop talking
Once upon a time, before the age of social media, Canlit was inclusive and kind, and political differences were settled amicably over whisky in private festival hospitality suites and the kind of dark ...
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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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February 21, 2024On Writing the Same Book Over and Over
In a 2015 webchat on The Guardian’s site, Kazuo Ishiguro was asked about his varied subject matter. He replied:“My subject matter doesn't vary so much from book to book. Just the surface does. The ...
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November 04, 2015On Writing Violence
Like all writers, I’m often asked what my writing is about. Especially with regards to my recently published collection of stories, Debris, and the novel that I am revising for publication next year ...
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November 24, 2015On Writing Violence - An Addendum
I’ve been receiving a lot of positive feedback and some questions about one of my first posts for Open Book, “On Writing Violence.” One reader, Susan, asked me in the comments about how this all ...
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January 31, 2014
On Writing, with Dane Swan
By Open Book and Dane SwanDane Swan is Open Book's February 2014 Writer in Residence. In his On Writing interview, he tells us about his latest book, Bending the Continuum, his next project and his ideal ...
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June 20, 2017On Writing, with Darryl Whetter
Darryl Whetter's Search Box Bed (Palimpsest Press) brings together poetry, with all its historical associations of love and romance, and new media, with its accompanying online realities of sexual connection ...
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October 19, 2016On Writing, with Deni Ellis Béchard
Deni Ellis Béchard is a Commonwealth Writers' Prize-winning fiction writer and an acclaimed journalist whose work has taken him around the world. His newest book is the novel Into the Sun (House of ...
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June 10, 2016On Writing, with James Laxer
Three men shaped one of the most influential decades of North American history. John A. Macdonald, Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Jefferson, each an icon in his own right, all contributed in ways that are ...