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July 09, 2020
On Kendrick Lamar's good kid, m.A.A.d city
Music has always been part of my DNA. I consumed it with the same intensity as I did literature, and at no less voracious a rate. Large swaths of my adolescence were spent lying on the floor, eyes closed ...
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April 06, 2017
Kid Lit Can: Personal "Firsts" In Kid Lit, Part One
My Time To series of three board books– Nap Time, Play Time, and Bath Time – are being published this September. This signifies two “firsts” for me – first board books ever, and first time ever ...
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June 30, 2019Behind the Title: "Frying Plantain"
This is my last post for Open Book and I’ve been thinking about how I should end my June tenure as Writer in Residence. I landed on writing about the title of my book. I’ve been asked a few times ...
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March 23, 2020On Road Maps
Before beginning a project, is it worthwhile to do a detailed outline? Or is it preferable just to dive in? I’ve tried both approaches. In writing my first novel, After the Bloom, I outlined extensively. ...
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February 19, 2020Women, Politics, and Power: Read an Excerpt from Stephanie MacKendrick's Inspiring New Book 'In Good Hands'
Author, community leader, and former journalist Stephanie MacKendrick wants young women to get excited about politics. Her new book, In Good Hands: Remarkable Female Politicians From Around the World ...
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October 20, 2022Gary Barwin on Form, Social Media, and the "Epistemological Hijinks of Poems"
Known for his humour, creativity, and general up-ending of the peskily staid CanLit stereotype, poet and fiction writer Gary Barwin shows no signs of slowing down with 26 books to his name. His newest, ...
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December 19, 2023Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu on Collecting 21 Answers to the Question "What is the Future of Blackness?"
In 21 Black Futures: The Anthology, Obsidian Theatre, Canada's leading theatre for Black art, imagines the future of Blackness. Gathering 21 of the country's most talented writers, the anthology collects ...
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January 24, 2017On Writing, with Monia Mazigh
Monia Mazigh's Hope Has Two Daughters (translated by Fred A. Reed from its original French) is a powerful family story that covers not one but two revolutionary periods in Tunisian history. When Nadia ...
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March 09, 2016Kid Lit Can, with Susan Hughes: Sex, and Drugs, and Rock and Roll: Writing Edgy Ya (Part 2)
They’ve written about it all: drugs, gambling, sexual harassment, suicide, sexual abuse, physical abuse, cutting, death, sex, drugs, body image issues, bullying, STDs, abduction...Today I continue my ...
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August 05, 2016The Lucky Seven Interview, with Eve Zaremba
The Toronto Women’s Bookstore, Interval House, Rape Crisis Centres, and Broadside: A Feminist Review — Eve Zaremba's legacy for women in Toronto and beyond is so far-reaching it's hard to summarize. ...