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October 10, 2017Open Book Celebrates Our 10th Anniversary: What We Love About Ontario
It's been 10 incredible years of covering Canadian, and especially Ontario, literature here at Open Book. Our site has changed dramatically over time, and we've had some amazing writers as part of our ...
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July 04, 2018
Stepping Twice into the Same City
On a recent trip to read from my new book in Vancouver—my second trip there, the last being more than 12 years ago—I found myself in conversation with Heraclitus.Best known, according to Plato, for ...
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April 30, 2014
Timelessness
Over the course of the WIR experience, I’ve often used my morning writing time to work on that day’s blog. This is sacred time when I shut the door on all distractions, from phone calls to my cat ...
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March 14, 2022"We are the Best Kind of Book Parents" Writer Sue Farrell Holler & Illustrator Jennifer Faria Discuss Their Creative Co-Process
Writer Sue Farrell Holler and illustrator Jennifer Faria knew they had something good going after their acclaimed picture book Raven, Rabbit, Deer, so it makes sense that they've built on their connection ...
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July 30, 2018
The Part of It You Don't See
If you’ve been reading my dispatches over the last month, you might have inferred that making a go of it as a writer is hard. Bending reality, memory, knowledge and experience into believable fiction, ...
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July 26, 2019Excerpt: Read Five Poems from Hugh Thomas' Maze, a Witty and Language-Loving Collection of Mistranslations
Language can be a thorny, disorienting thing at times - a kind of hedge maze of meaning where it's easy, and sometimes even pleasurable, to get lost. This is what drives the poems in Hugh Thomas' new ...
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August 02, 2017Gwaandak
This started off as a straightforward article about Gwaandak Theatre, Yukon’s only Indigenous theatre company. But something went wrong. Or right.I wanted to feature Gwaandak’s production, Map of ...
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April 19, 2017In Praise of Those Who Publish Nothing
Like many of my time zone, I spent the night of November 9th with my smartphone on the same pillow as my head, awakening every now and again to check, and get my mind around, the news. I also had very ...
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September 08, 2014On the Handmade (Part 2): Q&A with Christine Mcnair
(Part 2 of 3. I'm reposting the introductory text from Post 1 to set up the context for Christine McNair's response.)It’s been said that the hand-written letter is becoming lost to us, or that for many ...
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March 27, 2020On Emergency Landings
A few years ago, I boarded a crowded plane to Asia. As I reached my aisle seat, I was dismayed to notice that the guy next to me had his arm all over our shared armrest, spilling over to my side. He was ...
