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April 01, 2021Novelist 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, 2018Julie 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 ...
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October 11, 2024A Young Sleuth Arrives on the Scene in a Heartfelt Paranormal Mystery by Mikaela Lucido
Like many authors who write about young sleuths and detectives as they investigate various mysteries, Mikaela Lucido loved the atmosphere and intrigue in those stories, but had her own ideas about how ...
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July 25, 2023Read an Excerpt from Denise Da Costa's And the Walls Came Down, an Absorbing Portrait of East Toronto in the 90s
A diary can be a powerful portal. In Denise Da Costa's And The Walls Came Down (Dundurn Press), Delia Ellis returns to her childhood home in east Toronto, years after making her ways through the trials ...
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June 16, 2020On Stage: Jordi Mand on the Freedom of Playwriting and What To Do When The Work's Not Working
Brontë sisters Emily, Charlotte, and Anne have come to a crossroads. While they've long enjoyed writing as a hobby, with a father gravely ill and a brother struggling with addiction, it's up to them ...
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May 25, 2017
The In Character interview, with Suzette Mayr
Suzette Mayr's Giller-nominated Monoceros charmed and moved readers across the country upon its publication, so it's no surprise that readers are excited about her new novel, Dr. Edith Vane and the ...
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October 30, 2024Andrew Forbes' Debut Novel, The Diapause, is a Literary-Speculative Gem
Readers of Open Book may find our featured author of the day familiar, as the prolific Andrew Forbes has had an excerpt of his recent novella published on the site just this summer. Known for his stirring ...
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March 15, 2017On Writing, with Rita Wong
Water has captured countless writers' imagination, appearing as subject, image, and metaphor in every genre of writing, but with climate change and pollution, our collective relationship to water is changing.Now ...
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January 23, 2018"What Keeps Me Going is the Element of Discovery": Debut Author Djamila Ibrahim on Building Unforgettable Characters
Djamila Ibrahim's Things are Good Now (House of Anansi) is the kind of debut that can't be ignored. A vibrant, gutsy, thoughtful short fiction collection, it was called "an insightful and imaginative ...
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May 21, 2025Saad Omar Khan Delicately Illuminates the Arcs of Two Haunted Lives in Drinking the Ocean
Having already built a reputation for his short fiction, Saad Omar Khan is another new voice with a depth of experience and knowledge that finds its way into his storytelling. The author has now arrived ...