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May 09, 2016
Where We Do What We Do
The first stories of any quality that I produced were written at an old white melamine desk in the windowless furnace room of my future in-laws' house in suburban Ottawa. The hot water tank clicked and ...
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May 06, 2016
Comics in Parkdale - the Draw of a Good Comic Book Store
My interest in superhero movies has plunged to zero in the past couple of years, but I’ve found myself steadily reading more comic books. Thinking about this just after the recent Authors for Indies ...
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May 06, 2016
Mother's Day
As people, as writers, we are often formed or directed by crystallizing moments in our lives, brief happenings which nonetheless persist in our minds, or which port some lesson, or confirm for us a suspicion ...
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May 05, 2016
The Unscripted Idle
I spent this past Saturday at Books & Company in Picton, under the auspices of Authors for Indies, and I came away feeling happy, but with a top note of frustration, because I passed the afternoon ...
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May 03, 2016
Some 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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May 02, 2016
By Way of Introduction
If, as I am given to understand, the point of a writer-in-residence, whether virtual or actual, is in part to hold forth on the mechanics and practice of writing, then let me start by laying bare my understanding ...
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April 28, 2016
"We're All Teachers," an Interview With Michael Fraser
Michael Fraser is a high school teacher and author of two collections of poetry, The Serenity of Stone, and, most recently, To Greet Yourself Arriving. If you attended NOW Magazine’s Battle of the Bards ...
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April 27, 2016
"Obsession Looks Different on Everyone," an Interview With Emma Healey
Emma Healey is the poetry critic for the Globe and Mail. Her book, Begin With the End in Mind, is a witty collection of prose poetry, a sort of Young Urbanist’s Guide to being Canadian, a 21st century ...
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April 22, 2016
“I Imagine the Mind Like a Cleared Field,” an Interview with Chad Campbell
Chad Campbell’s Laws & Locks is an ambitious debut collection of poetry that is part family history and part memoir. Charting the Campbell family's emigration to Canada in 1827 and shifting to the ...
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April 20, 2016
Kid Lit Can, with Susan Hughes: the Magic, the Wonder - Chatting with Ya Fantasy Authors (Part 1)
In my capacity as freelance story coach and manuscript critiquer, I receive many inquiries and, interestingly, I’ve realized that a disproportionately high number of them are from writers working on ...