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July 06, 2015
“…Writing Was a Nasty Habit or Addiction That I Would Have to Support.”
This quote, which comes at 2:35 of the attached interview with Guy Vanderhaeghe, sums up a pragmatic approach to the early years of a writing life, years that for many of us can stretch for decades, or ...
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August 17, 2018Form as Home
Every time I sit down to write, I find myself exasperated by the considerations. The considerations of who will be reading it, how it’ll be interpreted, if it’ll hurt someone within or outside my ...
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April 24, 2020A Crip Writer’s Advice for Surviving a Pandemic
“Write a book!”“Finish your memoir!”“Turn all this fear and grief into brilliant poetry!”As we have all now found out, the cultural imperative to be as productive as possible doesn’t disappear ...
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November 28, 2017Tanya Talaga on the Title and Tragedy of Seven Fallen Feathers
The tragic story of 12-year-old Chanie Wenjack is a rightfully well known one now in Canada - how the young boy froze to death after running away from a residential school. What is less known is that ...
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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, ...
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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 ...
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November 14, 2025The Captivating Thriller EARWORM Chronicles a Young Woman's Battle Against Oppression
In his spectacular new play, Earworm (Playwrights Canada Press), Mohammad Yaghoubi delivers a haunting and deeply human story about memory, trauma, and the uneasy search for freedom. The novel follows ...
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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 ...
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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) ...
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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 ...