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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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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 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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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 ...
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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 ...
