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June 30, 2016
The Many Colours of Kamal Al-Solaylee
Kamal Al-Solaylee wrote an amazing book called Brown. It's essential reading and its subtitle, What Being Brown in the World Today Means (to Everyone), says why you need to read it much more concisely ...
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September 24, 2019
A Writer's Best Friend
I think I could be accurately described as an outgoing introvert. I can make small talk, and I even enjoy it, but I find it exhausting. Most of the time I’m happier just hanging out by myself or with ...
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April 22, 2020
All of this listening
It was hard to write this column. Like everyone else, I’m all for trying to grasp at normalcy where I can, but I don’t have many writing tips to share right now. (Actually, I do have one writing tip: ...
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August 02, 2016
THE Incredible Shrinking Writer
It’s almost six years now since, after nearly half a century in Toronto, I moved to Cobourg, pop. 18,500. My adopted home — "Ontario’s Feel Good Town" — is just a ninety-minute commute east by ...
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May 11, 2020
Goals from another time.
I found this piece of paper recently. I’d made it many years back and stuck it to my wall when I was trying to get organized with my linked short story collection, Coconut Dreams.Some observations:I’d ...
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December 02, 2017
The Colour Purple
I am very, very short-sighted. Way off the normal sight spectrum. Like a career politician. The spawn of two myopic parents, I am a mole, midget-sighted. My natural focal point is my own nose. No, I have ...
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April 21, 2021
Read an Excerpt from Meghan Bell's Short Stories, Erase and Rewind, An Insightful, Darkly Funny Debut Collection
The young women of Erase and Rewind (Book*hug Press), the debut story collection by Meghan Bell, are funny, flawed, gutsy, and wonderfully compelling to listen to and witness.From the story of a superhero's ...
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July 22, 2015
A Bona Fide Once in a Lifetime: Awaiting the First Review of My First Novel
Coming off a one hour presentation about my novel this evening at The Haliburton School of the Arts, a presentation that I enjoyed immensely (largely because of the engaging and welcoming audience), I ...
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April 01, 2021
Novelist John Jantunen on Opening Scenes, Naming Murderers After Friends, & the Strange Time He Met His Protagonist in Northern Ontario
In the not too distant future, a prison filled with hardened inmates is suddenly plunged into darkness. The power has mysteriously gone out, and it's not coming back. The guards flee the prison, leaving ...
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September 05, 2018
Julie Bruck on the Beauty of Found Sources, Poems with Long Tails, & the Best and Worst Things About Being a Poet
Who says it's impossible to be serious and hilarious at the same time? Julie Bruck proves that it can be done with her daring, inventive, witty, and gutsy How to Avoid Huge Ships (Brick Books), a collection ...