Search
-
October 30, 2018SK Dyment on Crafting Characters in Steel Animals, a Smart, Hilarious New Book of Queer Magic Realism
Jackie is a quiet loner who happens to secretly be a badass bank robber. Vespa is a artist who rides motorbikes and obsessively plans her revenge on an ex-partner. Together, they find love and a heap ...
-
November 22, 2018
Inspiration is Inconvenient
I’ve been talking about writing, publishing, YA, comics, and all of these other aspects of being involved in the writing world. Now I’m going to interrupt all of this to talk about inspiration. It’s ...
-
February 05, 2019Who I Think About When I Write … It’s Probably You: A List of Questions to Ask Yourself About Audience as You Write
I find it really challenging to write a picture book without imagining its audience. In whose hands will the finished book end up? What will make them pick it up? Will they find my story satisfying? To ...
-
June 28, 2019Navigating Microaggressions as a Black Writer in CanLit
Story time! Yesterday evening, I had the pleasure of doing a talk with the wonderful and talented Olive Senior and I was excited because it was held in the same neighbourhood where my protagonist, Kara, ...
-
August 31, 2020How to Be Exceptionally Editable
When I first started writing children’s books, I possessed the strength and virility of a thousand strong and virile men. I believed in my ideas and held fast to them. While I was open to the editorial ...
-
July 06, 2016What is Literary Fiction? Ask a Romance Publisher
Years ago, I was the guest author at a summer camp for teen writers. The afternoon started well: I read a bit from my first novel, spoke in very general terms about how I became a writer, and outlined ...
-
July 08, 2015
The Gift of Interacting with Readers
Many years ago I finished reading a book that resonated for me. The characters in it and their struggles felt real. I lived with them for a while, found pain in their sorrows, amusement in their foibles, ...
-
April 20, 2015
Otherwiseness: Thinking with José Muñoz and Lauren Berlant
About seven years ago, I wrote a series of terrible poems, each of which was trying to work out in my own head and writing how to think about “otherwise” as a process of perceiving and thinking. I ...
-
February 05, 2016It Began With Degrassi-Themed Walkie-Talkies: Part One of Desert Pets Press in Conversation
Desert Pets Press is a brand new chapbook press that launched their first season in Fall 2015. The press was instantly recognized for creating beautiful books with interesting new poetry, which comes ...
-
February 12, 2021
LOVE IN THE TIME OF COVID: The writing process Part 4 of 9
The creation of tension and suspense and mood shifts to me are just as important as creating characters and the plot themselves. Tension and suspense is what makes the story come alive. For the short ...
