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April 29, 2019
The Fireflies of Poetry
“At the heart of the universe is a steady, insistent beat: the sound of cycles in sync.” (Steven Strogatz, Sync: How Order Emerges From Chaos in the Universe, Nature, and Daily Life, 2015)What might ...
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December 19, 2019
5 Great Books to Escape With Over the Holiday Season
As the holidays approach, life can get a bit hectic. Whether you're cooking for large amounts of people, organizing travel plans, or mentally preparing yourself to deal with that one difficult relative, ...
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May 31, 2019
The Mindful Writer and the Desire To Publish
This is my last post with Open Book. I tried to approach my residency by writing about things that writers might find useful, or at least semi-entertaining. And I find it amusing that just like being ...
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May 16, 2019
5 Tips on the Editing Process
Edits, edits everywhere, and several drops to drink...The final edit of the interior pages of my new middle grade adventure, THE LOST SCROLL OF THE PHYSICIAN, is due this Monday.Now is the time when I ...
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April 05, 2019
Don’t Stand Too Close to this Poetry!
Your computer/tablet/phone are listening . . . and learning . . . and not always in the way you might expect it to benefit you.Bruce Schneier wrote that “Surveillance is the business model of the internet.”Search ...
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September 30, 2019
"When I Write Poetry, I Feel Limitless and Free" Hasan Namir, author of War / Torn, on Process & Poetry
Hasan Namir's debut collection, War / Torn (Book*hug), was one of the most buzzed-about books of poetry in the spring 2019 season for good reason; Namir's lucid, visceral examination of masculinity ...
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April 17, 2019
Creative Life
I was asked to give a keynote address at the launch of the student literary journal, Scarborough Fair at the University of Toronto Scarborough. The theme was “The Creative Life”. As their Writer in ...
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April 23, 2019
Literary Road Trip Destination: Talking about Prince Edward County's "County Reads" Festival with Barbara Sweet
There's more than wine, bike tours, and golden beaches in Prince Edward County. Fast becoming a centre for the arts in Ontario, one highlight of the County's jam-packed arts calendar is the County Reads ...
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June 28, 2019
Navigating Microaggressions as a Black Writer in CanLit
Story time! Yesterday evening, I had the pleasure of doing a talk with the wonderful and talented Olive Senior and I was excited because it was held in the same neighbourhood where my protagonist, Kara, ...
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March 01, 2020
On Photography
Writing, for me, often begins with an image. By this, I mean not an imaginary image that appears in the mind’s eye, but rather an actual photograph I stumble across in my daily life. A certain picture ...