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July 18, 2014Grounds for Communion
People in grief think a great deal about self-pity. We worry it, dread it, scourge our thinking for signs of it. We fear that our actions will reveal the conditions tellingly described as “dwelling ...
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July 13, 2014Modest Portraits of My Mother
So perhaps my mother doesn’t need to be my queen; simply being my mother is already a lot, even if the rare kisses I place on her cheeks aren’t so majestic. —Kim Thúy, Ru**As a statue:Bootprints ...
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July 10, 2014His Gravity
We shun those who bear the mark of death, and this is a form of baseness to which even I succumbed. Quite deliberately, out of a base instinct for self-preservation, I shunned my friend in the last months ...
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June 28, 2014What to Eat While Reading: Savoury Stilton Pecan Shortbread
My novel The Oakdale Dinner Club is about two women who become friends in their senior year of high school after they hand in identical answer sheets for a math test and are accused of cheating. They ...
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June 27, 2014Forget Cottage Country: 8 Reasons to Summer in the City of Toronto
School’s out and the Canada Day weekend is nigh, but that’s no reason to get out of town. Stay here, and enjoy these only-in-Toronto good things instead:1. Toronto IslandBike down to the ferry docks ...
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June 04, 2014I'm so Hood: Toronto in Literature
The great and good Toronto Public Library recently introduced a cool new feature on their website.Toronto in Literature: Book Lists by Neighbourhood gives info – with a convenient map – on published ...
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May 28, 2014Acknowledgements: Elton D'Costa, Librarian
Book publishing, as an industry, is not unlike a Jenga tower held together by sheer force of will. If the industry works at all, it's only because many dedicated and diligent people work or little reward ...
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May 23, 2014
The Dirty Dozen, with Kim Moritsugu
Kim Moritsugu is Open Book: Toronto's June 2014 writer-in-residence. Her most recent book is The Oakdale Dinner Club (Dundurn), which tells the story of a suburban mom who throws a dinner party with a ...
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May 23, 2014Words & Curds: Ben Hatke, Creator of Zita the Spacegirl
On May 11, I whisked comics creator Ben Hatke (Zita the Spacegirl, Flight) away from the Toronto Comics Arts Festival to enjoy some poutine and undergo an interrogation. The American writer and illustrator ...
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May 22, 2014Down the Hall: Léonicka Valcius and #Diversecanlit, Part 2
I met with Léonicka Valcius, organizer of the #diversecanlit, on Tuesday, May 6, to talk about the the issues, challenges, and solutions involved in making CanLit a more diverse enterprise. Part one ...