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    April 01, 2014Welcome to National Poetry MonthI always feel a bit uncomfortable when Poetry Month commences. It’s like I’ve had a secret for the last eleven months, no one really interested in how I’ve spent my days, successfully managing to ... 
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               May 07, 2024 May 07, 2024Wendy Orr Takes Readers to The Valley of Horses and Beyond in Her Newest BookDuring the fraught and uncertain years of the COVID-19 pandemic, author Wendy Orr and her family found themselves in Australia, locked-down and away from family back in Canada. Worried about the ways ... 
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               April 24, 2019 April 24, 2019What a Poem Does, Not what it MeansIn an earlier post, I wrote that both writer and reader should focus more on how a poem comes to be.We seem to spend a disproportionate amount of time trying to understand what a poem means as opposed ... 
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               April 25, 2019 April 25, 2019What Agents Are Looking For: Interview with Marilyn BidermanOne afternoon, when I was feeling particularly angsty, I tweeted out to my followers, “How do BIPOC writers get agents?” I received some encouraging responses, as well as some that had me questioning ... 
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               September 10, 2021 September 10, 2021What Big Open Spaces Taught Me About Finishing a DraftWho doesn’t like writing at home, with the comfort of Maltesers, a perfect sound setup, and being able to write naked? Writing outside of your comfy space is much harder than it seems.In June this year, ... 
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               August 24, 2020 August 24, 2020What Do You Do When Your Disability Keeps You from Writing? What I Learned When I Launched a Brute Force Hack on my BrainWhat Do You Do When Your Disability Keeps You from Writing? What I Learned When I Launched a Brute Force Hack on my Brain [1]A few years ago, I started hiking alone. I enjoyed escaping the city to one ... 
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               February 18, 2020 February 18, 2020What Do You Wish You Had Known Before Becoming a Children's Book Creator?I’ve worked in children’s publishing for nearly fifteen years and I’ve been writing children’s books for about five years. All this to say, I learned a lot about the realities of publishing children’s ... 
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               November 29, 2019 November 29, 2019What Does Work/Life Balance Look Like for Writers?“What do you want to be when you grow up?”This is a question children are often asked with a bemused smile by teachers, family, or friends. They expect that you’ll reply with some fantastical thing: ... 
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    July 26, 2018What I Talk About When I Talk About Talking PointsWhen a publisher agrees to publish your book—or at least, when both of my publishers agreed to publish my two books—the author is presented with a questionnaire. If you don’t overthink it, the questions ... 
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    March 10, 2017What I Wish Someone Had Told Me about Becoming a Writer #2: Elisabeth de MariaffiIn my early 30s I went back to school to do my MFA at the University of Guelph-Humber. I was afraid I'd be older than everyone else in my cohort, and thus I was happy to meet a contemporary in Ken Babstock's ... 
 
            
    
                         
            
    
                         
            
    
                        