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July 10, 2015On Sports and Writing
Years ago, when applying to MFA Programs, I was asked for a personal essay about my writing and writing influences. Without a shred of irony I stated that my earliest literary influences were televangelists ...
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June 16, 2020On Stage: Jordi Mand on the Freedom of Playwriting and What To Do When The Work's Not Working
Brontë sisters Emily, Charlotte, and Anne have come to a crossroads. While they've long enjoyed writing as a hobby, with a father gravely ill and a brother struggling with addiction, it's up to them ...
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July 30, 2018
On Staying Hungry
One night after a reading years ago, before any of us had published a book, I and another writer I know gave a third writer friend a pretty hard time about not wanting to submit stories to magazines. ...
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September 27, 2021
On Synchronicity, or: a Set of Emergent/Entangled Influences
Moments of liberation—such as those of revolutionary rupture, or personal “peak experiences”—matter enormously, insofar as they remind us that conditions that once seemed fixed are not, and create ...
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June 09, 2015
On the Benefits of Not Writing (Surfing)
It isn’t (usually) wise to blame other people for things that happen to you, but I blame Dr. Kary Banks Mullis for everything.Dr. Mullis is a Novel Prize-winning biochemist who devised paradigm-shifting ...
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August 31, 2018On the future of Canlit
You guys, this is my last Open Book column.I have been writing this column for a year now and I’ll admit I didn’t know what I was going to write about when Holly Kent and Kevin Hardcastle asked me ...
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September 08, 2014On the Handmade (Part 1): Qs and a Response by Phil Hall
It’s been said that the hand-written letter is becoming lost to us, or that for many of us, it has already disappeared. I’ve heard too that longhand itself is no longer being taught in our schools. ...
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September 08, 2014On the Handmade (Part 2): Q&A with Christine Mcnair
(Part 2 of 3. I'm reposting the introductory text from Post 1 to set up the context for Christine McNair's response.)It’s been said that the hand-written letter is becoming lost to us, or that for many ...
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September 08, 2014On the Handmade (Part 3): Q&A with Jennifer Still
(Part 3 of 3. I'm reposting the introductory text from Post 1 to set up the context for Jennifer Still's response.)It’s been said that the hand-written letter is becoming lost to us, or that for many ...
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September 14, 2014On the Idea of a Secret (Part 1)
“The idea of a secret that will be revealed always results in one of two scenarios: death and destruction, or self-discovery and recovery beyond our wildest dreams of unification. And in the greatest ...
