Search
-
November 07, 2019Book Therapy: Jessica Westhead’s Worry
"Her brain and her body were still so wobbly then. Nothing about her was behaving the way it was supposed to. The birth had been a traumatic one, and she thought she would never heal.” - Jessica Westhead, ...
-
May 08, 2022
Something New Under the Sun
"Writing is no trouble: you just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itself—it is the occurring which is difficult."~Stephen Leacock, Canadian HumoristI recently attended ...
-
July 17, 2019"We Need to Celebrate the Efforts of Our Students" Author & Educator Larry Swartz on Teaching Creative Writing
As an instructor at U of T's prestigious teaching education program, OISE, Larry Swartz knows a thing or two about inspiring students. He's also written several teaching guides and textbooks, which focus ...
-
April 05, 2023Vera Constantineau on the Haibun Form & Finding Poetry in Buddhism's 108 Defilements
While Catholicism has its seven deadly sins, Buddhism gets a lot more specific, with a whopping 108 temptations that practitioners seek to avoid. Alternatively translated as impurities, vexations, or ...
-
February 16, 2023Mudlarking, Unexpected TV Appearances, & More: Getting to Know Children's Writer Nancy Cooper
Meeting new people isn't easy. For Amik the beaver, the character at the heart of Nancy Cooper's picture book Biindigen! Amik Says Welcome (Owlkids Books, illustrated by Joshua Mangeshig Pawis-Steckley) ...
-
November 21, 2017An Interview with Canisia Lubrin
“I think memory, or more specifically, history, plays a role in how we understand ourselves." - Canisia Lubrin. The encyclopedic poetry of Canisia Lubrin simultaneously works on intellectual and cerebral ...
-
September 20, 2018The Vine Awards for Jewish Literature Announces 2018 Shortlists
Today the Koffler Centre of the Arts announced the shortlists for the 2018 Vine Awards for Canadian Jewish Literature. The jury, made up of writers Beverley Chalmers, Joseph Kertes, and Lee Maracle, ...
-
November 20, 20193 Practices the Literary Scene Could Learn from Spoken Word Artists
When I was curating So Fresh: A Scarborough Reading, I desperately wanted to bring together two worlds that I deeply loved. First were the authors that I knew from the literary community. Authors like ...
-
January 24, 2017Teaching Teens to Write
Nora Ohanjanians is a retired high school English teacher who taught the Grade 12 Writer's Craft course at the school where I teach. One of my favourite people, Nora is a very warm, giving person. She ...
-
May 23, 2014Words & Curds: Ben Hatke, Creator of Zita the Spacegirl
On May 11, I whisked comics creator Ben Hatke (Zita the Spacegirl, Flight) away from the Toronto Comics Arts Festival to enjoy some poutine and undergo an interrogation. The American writer and illustrator ...
