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May 02, 2019Getting to Know Coconut Dreams Author Derek Mascarenhas: Bloody Noses, Scars & Cozy Sweaters
Aiden and Ally Pinto, the brother and sister duo of the Pinto family, are at the heart of Derek Mascarenhas' linked story collection Coconut Dreams (Book*hug). Moving from Goa, India to suburban Canada, ...
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May 01, 2019"Perspective is Everything!" Fran L. Porter on Crafting Characters, Writing Effective Dialogue & More
Fran L. Porter's second book and first novel, The Wrong Brother (Crossfield Publishing), tells the story of Marigold Iona Anderson, who comes under the charismatic sway of neurologist Dr. Damien Sparks. ...
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May 01, 2019On Perfectionism: Stop it Right Now Thank You Very Much*
“Once you have realized what you need to improve in your piece—either from a writing partner's helpful responses or your own insights—you're ready to begin revising, a process you would be well ...
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April 29, 2019The Fireflies of Poetry
“At the heart of the universe is a steady, insistent beat: the sound of cycles in sync.” (Steven Strogatz, Sync: How Order Emerges From Chaos in the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life, 2015)What might ...
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April 26, 2019Amazon Announces First Novel Award Shortlist
The Amazon First Novel Award returns this year with an even bigger prize purse: the winner will receive $60,000 and each of the six finalists will receive $6,000 in prize money.The winner will be ...
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April 26, 2019"Inclusion Means More Than Just Checking a Box" FOLD Authors Ferguson, Foster & Rice on CanLit, How They Write & What They're Reading
It's hard to think of a literary event that has grown and expanded as quickly and with as much excitement around it as the The Festival of Literary Diversity (aka the FOLD). In just a few short years, ...
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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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April 25, 2019What Agents Are Looking For: Interview with Marilyn Biderman
One afternoon, when I was feeling particularly angsty, I tweeted out to my followers, “How do BIPOC writers get agents?” I received some encouraging responses, as well as some that had me questioning ...
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April 24, 2019Ben Ladouceur on Finding His Title Through Art and Tomatoes, Alice Munro, & the Allure of a Bossy Title
Ben Ladouceur, author of the acclaimed poetry collection Otter (and former Open Book columnist!) returns this spring with a characteristically smart, witty, emotionally sophisticated collection, Mad ...
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April 24, 2019What a Poem Does, Not what it Means
In an earlier post, I wrote that both writer and reader should focus more on how a poem comes to be.We seem to spend a disproportionate amount of time trying to understand what a poem means as opposed ...
