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May 22, 2017
Gotta read
The way it was, shapes of letters in the alphabet were like suggestions of different parts of insects. That was in the beginning when I first became aware of them, how different they were—the construction ...
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November 20, 2017Talking to Picture Book Creators - Part One
Admit it: Don’t you just wish you were me sometimes?Because when I recently came across four super picture books—A Bedtime Yarn by Nicola Winstanley, The Walking Bathroom by Shauntay Grant, Federica ...
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November 29, 2017So You Want to Write About Race
Somehow I have become on expert on writing race.This was not something I planned for. When I started publishing, I was writing fiction about Chinese Canadian characters, about families who had been invisible ...
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April 21, 2023Read an Excerpt from Gregory Koop's The Donkey Cutter, a Gritty, Moving Tale of Early 20th Century Canada
In Gregory Koop's The Donkey Cutter (Guernica Editions), Mareika Doerksen and her distant father are Mennonite in name only. Both mourning the loss of Mareika's mother, they bide their time until Mareika ...
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June 25, 2021A daydreamer’s guide to the world outside
How children’s stories can cultivate connection to nature, and why I look wistfully out of windows I’ve spent most spare moments I’ve had during the recent time blob staring out of windows. Between ...
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April 23, 2020"I Know Exactly What Made Me a Poet: Impatience" Grant Loveys on Being a Writing Addict, Killer Endings, and the Thunder of Yates
As its title suggests, the things, people, and situations in Newfoundland poet Grant Lovey's newest collection, Miscreations (ECW), are far from perfect. But that's precisely what makes them so fascinating.An ...
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February 02, 2017The Proust Questionnaire, with Paul Benedetti
To paraphrase Tolstoy, it seems fair to say that each funny family is funny in its own way. The Hamilton Spectator's Paul Benedetti runs with that idea in his hilarious portrait of modern family life, You ...
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December 10, 2017The Moth
I do not nominate the moth, pallid creature of night, to be any sort of talisman or totem. Moths are vandals, eating your heirloom woolens. These Visigoths deserve summary execution. No last meal of tartan ...
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March 31, 2023April Writer in Residence Manahil Bandukwala Explores the Woman Behind the Taj Mahal in Her Masterful Debut Poetry Collection
One of the most iconic landmarks in world history, the spectacular Taj Mahal, was famously built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan to house the tomb of his favourite wife. A romantic story; a favourite tourist ...
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June 21, 2017Meritocracy in a Pale World
Inevitably, I find myself having this conversation:“Why does there always have to be preference or segregation? We should all be judged together and that the best literature will naturally rise to the ...