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February 20, 2020The Kids Club Interview: Jennifer Maruno Explores the Complications of Tween Friendship In Her New Book
For kids enjoying their first years of social independence, negotiating new friendships can be overwhelming. Bonds are quickly made and broken, leaving confusion and tears in their wake. In her newest ...
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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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October 25, 2022On Giving Yourself Room to Change (Or, Eros the Bittersweet)
A few months ago, I talked to someone on the phone. I didn’t know this person well and though I’d seen them over Zoom somewhat regularly for our work together, I never really noticed them too much. ...
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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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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 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 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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March 14, 2014
The Reading Rulebook
I used to go to a lot of public readings of poetry and fiction. Then I had kids, and rarely went, but recently, due to changing circumstances, I've been out to a few more, and what hasn't changed are ...
