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May 06, 2019Moving On and Holding On: Writing Picture Books as Therapy
Is it just me or is closure overrated and nearly impossible to achieve? It sometimes feels like the more you try to shut out painful experiences, the more they wave their hands around and yell, “Look ...
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August 24, 2023Eugenie Fernandes on Breaking Down the Extrovert/Introvert Dichotomy in Her Lovable New Picture Book
In recent years, the idea of introverts (those who may enjoy social interactions but find them draining) and extroverts (those who gain energy from social interactions) has been everywhere, from online ...
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May 23, 2009
Teenagers with a Vision...
I enjoyed meeting Emil Sher and reading with him at Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People this morning. Folks visiting ranged in age from babies in buggies to ladies and gents with white hair. That’s ...
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April 26, 2019Poet Ayaz Pirani on Oral Tradition, Literary Gatekeepers, and Writing Faithful Lines
Ayaz Pirani's work has been praised as "wise... surprising [and] sly" and his newest collection, Kabir’s Jacket Has a Thousand Pockets (Mawenzi House), builds on his characteristic insightful, elegant ...
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October 18, 2023Getting to Know Aley Waterman, the Newfoundland Author Whose Debut Novel is Destined to Become a Toronto Classic
In Aley Waterman's debut novel Mudflowers (Rare Machines/Dundurn Press), Sophie's life seems like an indie movie dream from the outside – in her cramped but cool apartment in Toronto's west end, she ...
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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 ...
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February 21, 2022
*Well, excuuuse me, Princess
Welcome back, Open Book reader. Lovely to see you again, hope you’re doing well. As promised, I’m going to give some insight into what fuels all this nerdiness I’m brimming with. The relatively ...
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April 12, 2022Read an Excerpt from Caroline van Rooyen's Any Girl, About a Teen Survivor Hunting Down a Predator
Content warning: sexual violenceCaroline van Rooyen's Any Girl (Mawenzi House) is the harrowing, fiery story of July, the unlikely 15-year old heroine who wages war on a rapist terrorizing her community ...
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March 24, 2020Dirty Dozen: Jane Munro Talks Teenage Jobs, Her First Poem, and the Joys of the Upside-Down
Griffin Prize-winning poet Jane Munro's newest collection, Glass Float (Brick Books), is a study of boundaries and connections. The limit of the horizon, of a land-bound glass float, is used to illustrate ...
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October 23, 2018Bad Reviews and Broken Hearts: How to Deal with All the Feelings
First: Spend several years working on you—I mean, a manuscript. Revise each draft based on feedback from your therapist—I mean, editor. Get Tinder—I mean, get publishing deal. Agonize over each ...
