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May 05, 2025The Pros and Cons of Beta Readers
I just finished an early draft of a new middle grade novel and realized as pressed “save” that even though it was nowhere near done, I’d taken it as far as I could.It was officially time for a beta ...
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August 31, 2012On Editing, with Anita Chong
On Editing is our newest interview series at Open Book, giving us the chance to speak to the great editors who help writers shape their work into the very best version of itself.Today we're pleased to ...
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June 07, 2019CBC Host Amanda Parris' New Play Celebrates Black Women Working for Change in a Biased Society
How do you change a society that seems stuck in its biases and ignorance? This is one of the urgent questions at the centre of CBC host Amanda Parris' powerful new play Other Side of the Game (Playwright ...
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July 19, 2016Art vs Writing, Writing vs Art
On the Ploughshares blog author Annie Weatherwax writes about the connections between visual art and literature, going so far as to say the former gave birth to the latter. Writing and art, she claims, ...
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May 26, 2021"Mysteries and Tensions and Splinters of Awe" Poet Michael Lithgow on Craft, Inspiration, & Great Reads
Behind the facade of comfort or beauty lurk questions and uncertainties — the things we're not only unsure if we know, but if we want to know. Such is the tension of Michael Lithgow's haunting second ...
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January 18, 2016The Lucky Seven Interview, with Paul Yee
Governor General's Literary Award winner Paul Yee is shaking things up, switching to writing fiction for adults after publishing nearly thirty books for young readers and adult non-fiction. A Superior ...
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June 21, 2021Playwright Makambe K Simamba on Fearlessly Exploring "How Far Characters are Willing to Go in Order to Live Their Truths"
CW: discussion of anti-Black violenceIt's a gutting image: a seventeen-year old Black boy, a child in a hoodie, dead far too soon because of hateful and unchecked anti-Black racism. Makambe K Simamba's Our ...
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September 05, 2023Something to delight in: Why I became a book publicist
From my bookish beginnings as an anxious kid who preferred the certainty of a good story to the probable humiliation of trying to make new friends, I always believed that making a career out of books ...
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June 17, 2016Revenge of the Indie Bookstore
In 2014, when I began booking my Crushes and Mountains US book tour with fellow Toronto-based writer Elisha Lim, I Googled “gay bookstore” or “independent bookstore” in cities we were planning ...
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June 27, 2023Read an Excerpt from A Hostage by Charlotte Mendel, A Timely Tale of Power, Politics, & Media
When Charlotte is kidnapped by notorious dictator Kassem in Charlotte Mendel's A Hostage (Inanna Publications), she does what she has to in order to maintain sanity, from creating a compartmentalized ...
