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August 06, 2020Kids' Club: Colleen Nelson on Her New Dog, Her Favourite Books, and Inter-Generational Connections
Harvey the Westie is back again in author Colleen Nelson's newest book, Harvey Holds His Own (Pajama Press).The furry protagonist of Harvey Comes Home is now working at the Brayside retirement home ...
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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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May 21, 2025Saad Omar Khan Delicately Illuminates the Arcs of Two Haunted Lives in Drinking the Ocean
Having already built a reputation for his short fiction, Saad Omar Khan is another new voice with a depth of experience and knowledge that finds its way into his storytelling. The author has now arrived ...
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November 23, 2021
13 Grant Writing Tips
I am not great at a lot of things, but I am great at writing grants. Not my own, particularly, but for others. I fell into grant writing out of necessity—writing my own in my contemporary dancer days, ...
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December 13, 2016CanLit's Next Generation: The 2016 Winners of IFOA's Write Across Ontario Student Writing Competition!
Every year, IFOA Ontario's Write Across Ontario student writing competition invites young authors across the province to submit their best work and show us what CanLit has to look forward to. We at Open ...
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October 30, 2017The Wonderfully Weird World of November writer-in-residence Lisa de Nikolits
Lisa de Nikolits is the author of an impressive seven novels, each of them marked by her wild creativity and memorable characters. Her latest offering is No Fury Like That (Inanna Publications), a genre ...
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September 19, 2018Ontario's Vibrant Voices: Talking to The Word on the Street Authors Lezlie Lowe, Rabindranath Maharaj, & Merilyn Simonds
The Word on the Street Toronto's Vibrant Voices of Ontario stage is a perennial favourite with festival goers, packed as it is with some of the brightest, most talented literary voices in the province. ...
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March 08, 2021On Giving Myself Permission Not to Write
I know I have to write it. The essay I’ve been trying to write for a year and a half.I will be in the grocery store or out in the muck of a hike dripping with sweat and a sentence of it will come to ...
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March 29, 2022The challenges (and joys) of receiving feedback
I am not proud of it, but my initial response to feedback on my writing is an instant NOPE. No way! ABSOLUTELY NOT. “What if you switched the point of view to third person?”NOPE. No way! ABSOLUTELY ...
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December 12, 2016
Kid Lit Can: What’s So Funny about Kids’ Books? Part 2
Welcome back to part 2 of my funny Q and A blog. With funny authors. About funny children’s and YA books.Please welcome these four talented and very funny children’s and YA writers who have generously ...