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August 12, 2021Words in Isolation
For many reasons, I felt conflicted about writing another pandemic piece. After the events of the last year, our everyday lives have been complete coloured by our experiences living in a pandemic. Despite ...
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July 06, 2022Beyond Flight: Etta Kaner Helps Kids Love Birds with Her Fascinating, Funny, Strange Book of Bird Habits
Anyone who is or knows a bird lover, knows that bird watching can be its own free, endless source of entertainment. In Etta Kaner's Dig, Dance, Dive: How Birds Move to Survive (Owlkids, illustrated ...
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February 26, 20232 dreams
The last dream I had about working at the coffee shop, I met one of my coworkers in a park that never existed. It was behind the Safeway up the street from our work. We talked a bit about how our lives ...
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March 24, 2025Finding a Press for Your Poetry Manuscript
In one of my first columns as an Open Book columnist, I shared my process of realizing I had a full-length poetry manuscript. Since then, I’ve written a number of columns about how to go about preparing ...
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July 31, 2025How to Give Useful Writing Feedback
Many writers have friends who are also writers, and sometimes those friends ask us to give feedback on their work. Yay! We get to help our friends succeed! However, there can also be anxiety behind it. ...
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September 20, 20172017 Weston Prize shortlist announced: 5 Books vie for $60,000
We are officially into the swing of literary prize season, with the Giller Prize longlist announced earlier this week, the Governor General's Literary Awards announcement around the corner (October 4), ...
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April 06, 2017League of Canadian Poets Announces 2017 Awards Shortlists
Today the League of Canadian Poets announced their shortlists for the Gerald Lampert and Pat Lowther Memorial Awards, the Raymond Souster Award and, together with the Calgary Spoken Word Society, the ...
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May 10, 2018Tanya Talaga Adds Writers' Trust Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing to Her Honours
Last night in Ottawa, politicians, writers, and diplomats gathered at the Fairmont Château Laurier for one of the year's glitzy's and most-coveted social events: Politics & the Pen. A fundraiser ...
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July 31, 2016Service Industry Hell (Part 6): Service Industry Heaven!
A lot of the inspiration for my new book, Congratulations On Everything, came from the things I saw while working in bars, restaurants, and hotels, and from the experiences of friends who did the same. ...
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April 24, 2014
Poetic
Tell a classroom of wannabe writers to try their hands at a poem and the stilted, strangely wrought language that ensues can be alarming. It’s like they’re being told to write in some World War II ...
