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November 29, 2017So You Want to Write About Race
Somehow I have become on expert on writing race.This was not something I planned for. When I started publishing, I was writing fiction about Chinese Canadian characters, about families who had been invisible ...
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June 15, 2016Social Media Magic, with Neil Wadhwa
I met Neil Wadhwa, who is digital marketing manager for House of Anansi Press & Groundwood Books, when my book was written, edited and it was time to release it out into the wild. Scary times for ...
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November 19, 2018
Some of the Best Books Come With Pictures
A friend of mine once told me that his favourite form of reading is instruction manuals. Seriously. Anything he could get his hands on that went through the process of describing how something worked ...
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May 03, 2016Some of the Best Books I Ever Read Weren't Books at All
I am on the record—somewhere, or perhaps multiple somewheres—as having said that one of the stories in my first collection, What You Need, represented an effort on my part to capture the feel of a ...
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March 21, 2018
Some things I never thought I’d be or do.
It is good, when the moment presents itself, to take stock of your accomplishments and express gratitude for the things that have come your way—especially those things you never imagined would be part ...
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November 27, 2020
Some Ways To Deal With Writer's Block
I used to think that writer’s block just meant not having any inspiration or ideas. If only it was just that! Now I know it’s many things - and for me, it’s mostly anxiety caused by both lack of ...
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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 ...
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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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February 14, 2016Something Totally New: Part One of Stephen Thomas in Conversation
I first came across Stephen Thomas on Twitter. It was 2012 and I’d started doing this embarrassing YouTube show no one watched called A Chat With Jess. Steve was doing something similar while doing ...
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May 28, 2026Sometimes Saving the World Means Breaking the Rules in LYING, STEALING, AND OTHER WAYS TO SAVE THE PLANET
Teen activism gets messy fast in Lying, Stealing, and Other Ways to Save the Planet (Annick Press), a sharp, funny YA novel that throws environmental politics, revenge, and high school grudges into the ...