Search
-
February 27, 2020Making Time: How Ondaatje Taught Me To Show Up For Myself, or Plotting vs. Pantsing
There are some books whose images stay with us long after we’ve read them, far more than the stories or the characters themselves. An image that has stayed with me over the years is from The English ...
-
November 26, 2019Read an Excerpt from Richard Harrison's 25: Hockey Poems, New and Revised
Winter is fast approaching, and for many Canadians that means bundling up, strapping on some skates and hitting the ice. From highly-organized leagues to friendly pick-up games on a local pond, our nation's ...
-
February 27, 2020
Blogpost #7: DOES WRITING KID’S BOOKS MAKE CENT$? Part 2 Financing your Writing
Since 2015, I have been a published author of books for young people and present my stories to hundreds of children each year. Some of the most common questions I am asked by this audience are ...
-
November 26, 2019
Workspace
1. Desk: the desk belongs to my partner, Bradford Werner. He covered it in plastic during his university years. I poke fun of him for it, but the wood is pristine. I cleaned for this photo, but if you ...
-
November 27, 2019The Entitled Interview, with Fereshteh Molavi
Fereshteh Molavi's newest book, Thirty Shadow Birds (Inanna Publications), is an exploration of the challenges faced by new immigrants and the deep scars left by a legacy of violence.Fleeing the bloodshed ...
-
November 28, 2019What to Do When Your Story Already Exists in the World
We all know that every story has already been told and our challenge, as writers, is to come up with new, original ways to tell stories. Unfortunately, sometimes you think you’ve done just that and, ...
-
March 01, 2020
Blogpost #8: TRENDING CURRENTLY: Top 8 Diverse Middle Grade and Young Adult Themes I’ve Observed
Dear Reader:This is my final post as the February 2020 Open Book Writer In Residence. (And, did you catch that this is the 8th blogpost and I am listing 8 middle grade and young adult themes? Didn’t ...
-
November 28, 2019"What's on the Page Is the Only Thing That Counts" Poet Bruce Meyer on Finding Inspiration and the Power of a Good Ending
For most of us, and especially in this day and age, life moves at a terrifyingly accelerated rate. We are permanently busy, focused on whatever is coming up next, unable (and, in some cases, unwilling) ...
-
March 01, 2020On 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 ...
-
November 29, 2019
Fiction, Memory, and Family
I reread books, often because a story or scene moved me and I want to know how the writer engineered it. It’s exciting to flip back to the first page and say, “of course! Of course the story ends ...
