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June 03, 2019I Promise You, It's Fiction.
Full disclosure, I had another post planned to kick off my Writer in Residency here on Open Book but I decided to change topics after seeing a write-up/review of my forthcoming short story collection. ...
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July 31, 2019Why you should re-read books
I am a big reader, but I am an even bigger re-reader. Yes, I have a mountainous stack of to be read books, but I believe that it’s important to my writing practice—and to my basic existence—to dive ...
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January 05, 2021Erin Silver's What Kids Did Shares Inspiring Stories of Kids Fighting the Pandemic in Big and Small Ways
The COVID-19 pandemic has wrecked worldwide havoc. Even for those lucky enough to stay healthy, the economic, personal, and emotional repercussions have been huge. It's incredibly heartening, amidst all ...
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March 02, 2017
Your Book Doesn't Belong to You
You can never control how your work is going to be read, and that's part of the lovely participatory nature of the writer-reader relationship. But it can sometimes be jarring. I spent seven years writing ...
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June 24, 2019Advice From Mentors Past
One of the most surprising things I’ve encountered since starting to talk publicly about my writing and my first book is how many people appreciate the fact that I mention the positive influence of ...
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January 24, 2017Teaching Teens to Write
Nora Ohanjanians is a retired high school English teacher who taught the Grade 12 Writer's Craft course at the school where I teach. One of my favourite people, Nora is a very warm, giving person. She ...
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July 13, 2021Read an Excerpt from Rob Benvie's Darkly Brilliant New Novel, Bleeding Light
Writer and musician Rob Benvie's newest book, Bleeding Light (Invisible Publishing) defies easy description. It follows four people, seemingly unconnected to one another, through wild journeys both physical ...
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July 08, 2024The Magic of Letter Writing
Summer challenge: Write a letter to your favourite authorWhen I was in Grade 3, I loved Jean Little’s books. So I did what I always do: I wrote her a letter. I told her all of my favourite things about ...
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January 25, 2017A Passage to Academia
I cannot separate Anupama Mohan from the context of school. I met her in university while she was completing her PhD. A fan of film, Shakespeare, and critical theory, she impressed our professors, took ...
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February 06, 2017
My Plastic Bag of Words Part 1 of 2
As stated in my interview, in my closet I have a plastic bag that has poems that I've rejected. That plastic bag is slightly more than a bag of failed poetry, and it represents my writing process in ...