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November 20, 2018Mike Barnes on Choosing a Deceptively Simple Title for His Book of Letters to Caregivers
Sometimes deft simplicity is where we find the greatest impact when it comes to writing. That proves true in the title of Mike Barnes' Be With: Letters to a Caregiver (Biblioasis). The title Be With ...
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December 05, 2023Mike Barnes on the Big Books in His Life, Including One Important "Thundering Masterpiece"
Mike Barnes is one of those rare writers who can do it all – in poetry, short fiction, novels, and memoir, he takes readers on nuanced, brainy, powerfully moving journeys. Fiercely intelligent yet consistently ...
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July 30, 2020Mom's Turn
While Accretion, my recently published debut, is a collection of poetry, it’s also a narrative closely based on a really transformative moment in my life a few years back. Given that family and tradition ...
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February 22, 2022Monique Polak on Helping Kids Find Themselves While Exploring Parental Alienation in Her New Middle Grade Book
Everything in Justine's world has changed since her parents got divorced. She and her little sister Bea travel across Montreal from one house to the other, living two lives. But when Justine's mother ...
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May 15, 2017
Monopoly on memory
Recently on Instagram, I saw a picture of Warszawa Centralna railway station and I was overcome by the smell and the sound the picture evoked. It smelled of damp concrete, earth, dirt and engine oil, ...
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March 26, 2021
Monster
When I walked in, the four of them were seated at a folding card table. Behind a cardboard screen, the Dungeon Master sat shuffling his stack of wrinkled maps and notes. I pulled up a chair, though the ...
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December 19, 2017Monster Ink
Today’s question--what is a monster?There is only one villain in my personal gallery of rogues-- the (ughh!) earwig, which smirks and slithers. Only this horror would appear on a wanted poster in my ...
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November 12, 2020Montreal's Matthew Hollett Wins CBC Poetry Prize for Pandemic Inspired Poem
Today, CBC Books announced Matthew Hollett of Montreal as the winner of the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize.His winning piece, "Tickling the Scar", was written during the early days of the pandemic, when Hollett, ...
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May 14, 2009
More Duppy Business?
Many years ago I read a book called HEALING THE FAMILY TREE by a psychiatrist, Dr. Kenneth McAll. I won’t go into the theories he presents in the book (it’s still available, for anyone who’s interested) ...
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April 23, 2014
More Revision
A friend confesses that he could spend the rest of his life revising a handful of the same poems. One change leads to another. It’s like a glassblower unsure whether to make a swan or a squirrel, the ...