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March 24, 2019Writer at Work: Speaking with the Dead
A couple of weeks ago, I had the honour of speaking on panels at Room Magazine’s Growing Room Festival. During a Q&A session with the audience after the intersectionality, diaspora, and Asian-Canadian ...
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April 21, 2022How to Start a Writers’ Group
I spent years working on a novel about a lifeguard who was terrified of drowning. Years, of sitting in the same corner of the same coffee shop bashing out draft after unreadable draft. And the only feedback ...
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February 08, 2016Kid Lit Can, with Susan Hughes: Sex, and Drugs, and Rock and Roll: Writing Edgy YA (Part 1)
Drugs, gambling, sexual harassment, suicide, sexual abuse, physical abuse, cutting, death, sex, drugs, body image issues, bullying, STDs, abduction...between them, YA authors C.K. Kelly Martin, Don Aker ...
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February 14, 2022
Valentine's Day! (and one or two other things I don't really like)
Hello, Open Book reader. Glad to have you back. So…remember that promise I made early on to curb the sass mouth? Well, apologies in advance because I’m breaking that promise today. Originally, I wasn’t ...
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September 28, 2016Writers' Trust announces 2016 Hilary Weston Prize for Nonfiction Shortlist
“The best non-fiction writing offers a window on other lives, other times, and other worlds.” That window is opening a little wider today with the announcement of the 2016 Hilary Weston Writers' ...
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April 25, 2018Illustrator Ellen Weinstein Collaborates with the MoMA to Celebrate Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Mirrors in Book Form
Yayoi Kusama, known for her trademark polka dot-centric art and the wild, childlike joy contained in her immersive works, is widely considered one of the most popular living artists in the world. Her ...
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April 12, 2014
Oh, Suspense!
In some literary circles, "suspense" is a bad word. Some feel that rich language and interesting characters should be enough to engage a reader's attention, and those who need a little pep in their fiction ...
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March 17, 2014You Are God
Writing is all on the page. Take most other arts: film, music, painting, and what goes into the making of each – the processes, the materials, the effort, are not obvious, are not laid out bare. There’s ...
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February 06, 2024Read an Excerpt from Pale Shadows by Dominique Fortier, Translated by Rhonda Mullins
What is the purpose of stories if they languish in the shadows? If they are written down only to wait by on paper in a drawer in the hope that someone, anyone, will pull them out and share them with the ...
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June 29, 2020
If You Care About Education, You Need to Care About Copyright
Unless you’re a writer, you probably don’t think much about copyright law. But if you are a parent, or care at all about education, copyright needs to be on the top of your mind.A quick overview:Authors ...