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June 13, 2019Dream Casting Frying Plantain
I know, it's super brave of me to make a post right after the Raptors won the championship (!!!!) but I'm going to do it anyway. The other day I did a talk at the Toronto Public Library (the Annette branch) ...
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June 03, 2019I Promise You, It's Fiction.
Full disclosure, I had another post planned to kick off my Writer in Residency here on Open Book but I decided to change topics after seeing a write-up/review of my forthcoming short story collection. ...
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November 04, 2021‘AMELIA THANK YOUS.docx’: The single Word document that kept me going
The first thing I do when I start reading a book is read the acknowledgments. I like to know where the book I’m about to read came from, and all the people who helped the author along the way. I love ...
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June 16, 2019Always A Blank Page Waiting
I remember the first time I heard a writer admit that she hated writing. It was 2011, on a panel during the Summer Writing School facilitated by the Creative Writing program at UofT’s School of Continuing ...
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June 24, 2019Advice From Mentors Past
One of the most surprising things I’ve encountered since starting to talk publicly about my writing and my first book is how many people appreciate the fact that I mention the positive influence of ...
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June 28, 2019Navigating Microaggressions as a Black Writer in CanLit
Story time! Yesterday evening, I had the pleasure of doing a talk with the wonderful and talented Olive Senior and I was excited because it was held in the same neighbourhood where my protagonist, Kara, ...
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June 11, 2019Confessions of an Uncertain Booklover
All my life, I’ve considered myself to be a booklover. Even my twitter handle has the word ‘literati’ in it (don’t judge me. I was a pretentious undergrad when I came up with it). English was ...
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April 04, 2018
Dream Space: an introduction to online obsessions for National Poetry Month
I’m writing this post in the middle of a sick day, in the middle of a sick week. I’ve been couchbound for what feels like a decade – my brain is foggy, my voice is shredded, and I’ve watched so ...
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June 19, 2019What Kdramas Taught Me About Storytelling
OK so first I feel like I should explain that literature and TV/film motivate me in different ways. I like to see it as craft vs. content. Books I love or respect teach me about word choice and pacing, ...
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June 30, 2019Behind the Title: "Frying Plantain"
This is my last post for Open Book and I’ve been thinking about how I should end my June tenure as Writer in Residence. I landed on writing about the title of my book. I’ve been asked a few times ...
