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October 11, 2019
Daddy Writer To Be – Writing for Children
For many years, I had a dream to write a children’s book. My passion of becoming a father inspired me to write a children’s book. As a child who questioned their own gender identity, I wanted ...
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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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September 06, 2022Scotiabank Giller Prize Announces 14-Book 2022 Longlist for $100,000 Award
This morning during a Facebook livestream, the Scotiabank Giller Prize announced its 2022 14-book longlist.Hosted by 2021 winner Omar el Akkad, the ceremony thanked judges Kaie Kellough, Katie Kitamura, ...
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September 14, 2014On the Idea of a Secret (Part 1)
“The idea of a secret that will be revealed always results in one of two scenarios: death and destruction, or self-discovery and recovery beyond our wildest dreams of unification. And in the greatest ...
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March 28, 2019Writer at Work: “Identity is a pain in the arse” (On Zadie Smith)
Last month, Zadie Smith said: "identity is a pain in the arse." She said this at a festival in the context of a discussion about identity politics and her (white) partner, Nick Laird. Here's a snippet ...
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July 08, 2015
The Gift of Interacting with Readers
Many years ago I finished reading a book that resonated for me. The characters in it and their struggles felt real. I lived with them for a while, found pain in their sorrows, amusement in their foibles, ...
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September 14, 2023The Pull of Two Needles
My first version of this essay was about how my two obsessions, knitting and writing, don’t compete with each other. I wrote at length about how they spin together in my brain in complicated steps, ...
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June 13, 2016#WritingTips Mondays: Jonathan Franzen - "The Reader is Not a Spectator"
In 2010, England's The Guardian newspaper asked some of the most acclaimed writers in the world to offer their top ten writing tips, inspired by Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing (William Morrow).To ...
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March 03, 2016The Writers' Trust of Canada Reveals Shortlist for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing
The Writers' Trust of Canada has named the five finalists for the $25,000 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. The prize, now in its sixteenth year, is awarded annually to a work of literary ...
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June 06, 2017Hockey Stalking
I’m a big advocate of writers carrying notebooks. You can jot down thoughts, overheard conversations—I’m a terrible eavesdropper—sights you want to call up later.Yesterday, a father was trying ...