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May 05, 2021Overcoming Imposter Syndrome
I have felt like an imposter. There have been times throughout my writing career when I’ve asked myself do I belong in this space? Do I deserve this opportunity? Am I skilled enough to call myself an ...
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May 31, 2016Writing What’s Closest to Home
Last year, when I turned in the first draft of a memoir on rape trauma, my editor had a pretty reasonable observation. Despite divulging various details of violation, illness, and the path to getting ...
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November 20, 20193 Practices the Literary Scene Could Learn from Spoken Word Artists
When I was curating So Fresh: A Scarborough Reading, I desperately wanted to bring together two worlds that I deeply loved. First were the authors that I knew from the literary community. Authors like ...
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March 29, 2022The challenges (and joys) of receiving feedback
I am not proud of it, but my initial response to feedback on my writing is an instant NOPE. No way! ABSOLUTELY NOT. “What if you switched the point of view to third person?”NOPE. No way! ABSOLUTELY ...
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May 20, 2023The Joys and Challenges of Writing for Adults AND for Kids
I’ve had May 2 circled on my calendar for months and months—it marks the pub date of my debut picture book, Dear Street. As the launch approaches, I’ve been thinking about how different the processes ...
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October 27, 2017How My Version of the Canlit Community Sustains Me
Two months ago, one of my best friends was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia. She is a mother. She is a prolific, brilliant writer. And she was my very first writer friend.We first met working ...
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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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September 27, 2017How I Learned to Write What Scares Me
Three years ago, I wrote a poem.Back then, a few very big things happened in my life. My marriage died. I found a new publisher. And, perhaps most importantly, I started teaching.For my entire publishing ...
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June 30, 2021Brain Fog: An Essay
Brain Fog: An Essay[1]“I am…” I type.But then a thought fords the sentence. My fingers hover above the keyboard, like soldiers awaiting a command. I have… forgotten something. But what?I can ...
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September 14, 2016Profile on Show and Tell Poetry Series, with a Few Questions
Show and Tell Poetry Series is a new reading series in Peterborough that features local emerging and established poets from Peterborough and beyond, held at Curated in the Charlotte Mews (203 Simcoe ...
