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September 12, 2018Notes on My Futile Attempts to Evade the Creeping Tendrils of Inescapable Progress
The other day, my six-year-old daughter told me that I’m on my phone too much.This was right after I’d grinned at a parking attendant and told him how thrilled I was to see a person at the gate instead ...
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September 12, 2018How to Finish Your Damn Book - For Beginners!
I often joke that writing a novel is like running a marathon---only no one bothers to tell you what the route is. When the gun goes off, you’re just supposed to head off in whatever direction you think ...
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September 11, 2018Tamara Faith Berger on The Happy Hooker, Judy Blume, & Her Fantasy Pick for Canada Reads
There's nobody quite like Tamara Faith Berger, whose striking, smart, erotic, and memorable writing upends every CanLit stereotype and has won her legions of devoted readers. She returns this fall ...
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September 10, 2018On Kindness, and Generosity
The Toronto literary community has recently lost two very bright lights, mourning the deaths of Priscila Uppal and Ann Ireland.Though I didn’t know either Ann or Priscila all that well, I feel fortunate ...
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September 06, 2018Getting to Know Jules Arita Koostachin: Acclaimed Filmmaker, Poet, Playwright & a Mama You Don't Want to Mess With
Filmmaker Jules Arita Koostachin has developed a reputation for moving, incisive, emotionally sophisticated storytelling in her films and television work. So it's no surprise that her debut poetry collection, Unearthing ...
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September 06, 2018Anatomy of a Short Story, or Where I Get (Some of) My Ideas
I’m not one of those writers who makes everything up completely from scratch. And seriously, do those writers even exist? (If they do, I am jealous of them.)In my fiction, almost everything comes from ...
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September 05, 2018Julie Bruck on the Beauty of Found Sources, Poems with Long Tails, & the Best and Worst Things About Being a Poet
Who says it's impossible to be serious and hilarious at the same time? Julie Bruck proves that it can be done with her daring, inventive, witty, and gutsy How to Avoid Huge Ships (Brick Books), a collection ...
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September 04, 2018Shauntay Grant Brings an Important Chapter of Black Canadian History to the Page for Children
Africville was once a vibrant community in Halifax. For over 150 years, it was home to Black Nova Scotians. Due to neglect and targeting by the city government however, the community eventually shuttered ...
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September 02, 2018Show Me the (Writing-Grant) Money!
Hello, and Happy September! Thanks to the excellent folks at Open Book for inviting me here, and thanks to you for tuning in, lovely readers-who-I’m-guessing-are-mostly-also-writers.All right, let’s ...
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August 31, 2018On the future of Canlit
You guys, this is my last Open Book column.I have been writing this column for a year now and I’ll admit I didn’t know what I was going to write about when Holly Kent and Kevin Hardcastle asked me ...
