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March 08, 2016Nuance vs. Notoriety
For the longest time, I’ve been of the strong belief of the writerly life as associated with an either/or mentality: concision and painstaking precision, or, as writer Jack Kerouac would put it in his ...
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October 02, 2023October 2023 Writer in Residence Peter Counter on Writing After the Unthinkable
Peter Counter was on a perfectly normal family vacation when the unthinkable happened: a stranger shot Counter's father, leaving Counter to drag him, wounded and bleeding, to safety. It was a moment ...
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September 28, 2017October writer-in-residence Canisia Lubrin on Poetry's Vast Possibility, Books She's Loved, and Not Getting Writer's Block
Poet Canisia Lubrin's much buzzed about debut Voodoo Hypothesis (Wolsak & Wynn) is a powerhouse of a collection. Lubrin is endlessly creative in pulling from science, pop culture, news stories, and ...
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November 25, 2019Offstage Magic
Festival season is over, and I’m still reeling from all the conversations and questions that have arisen offstage. What it is about the magic of writers without microphones, with cups of coffee and ...
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August 01, 2017
Oh hey, it’s me. Your old friend, Naseem.
I’ll be your writer-in-residence for August. I’m a first-time author and a former librarian, and I’ve worked in children’s publishing for over ten years. I’m a huge fan of improv, stand-up comedy, ...
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April 12, 2014
Oh, Suspense!
In some literary circles, "suspense" is a bad word. Some feel that rich language and interesting characters should be enough to engage a reader's attention, and those who need a little pep in their fiction ...
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March 04, 2018
Oh, the horror!
Here's some self-gossip for you: A few years ago, in the months leading up to the release date of my book, I was pleased to take part in Naked Heart, Toronto’s LGBTQ literary festival, and to read as ...
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November 27, 2015On "Fiction" - Writing from Real Life
Over the past while I’ve noticed a number of situations where an author is asked about the autobiographical or non-fiction elements in their books. It has always been something that people are interested ...
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September 11, 2021
On Anabiosis and Mosses Helping with Sleep
On Wednesday, on the way to the river, I stopped in my tracks, struck by the moss habitat on a birch tree on the bank. It is a twinned paper birch — with one dead trunk snapped off about two meters ...
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April 29, 2016On Back and Forth
Much like how poetry and fiction can give perspective on inner dialogue—the stuff of conscious thought—and how it works, interviews can be displays of outer thought—the stuff of collaboration and ...
