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June 24, 2019Advice From Mentors Past
One of the most surprising things I’ve encountered since starting to talk publicly about my writing and my first book is how many people appreciate the fact that I mention the positive influence of ...
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September 08, 2020Picture Book Magic
People are often surprised to learn that a picture book begins with the words. But every children’s book editor I’ve met has preferred to read a picture-book manuscript without any images. A good ...
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June 11, 2019Confessions of an Uncertain Booklover
All my life, I’ve considered myself to be a booklover. Even my twitter handle has the word ‘literati’ in it (don’t judge me. I was a pretentious undergrad when I came up with it). English was ...
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June 03, 2019I Promise You, It's Fiction.
Full disclosure, I had another post planned to kick off my Writer in Residency here on Open Book but I decided to change topics after seeing a write-up/review of my forthcoming short story collection. ...
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June 11, 2020Kids' Club: Marsha Skrypuch on the Real-Life Hero Behind Her New Book
Author Marsha Skrypuch's Sky of Bombs, Sky of Stars (Pajama Press) traces a young girl's harrowing journey from war-torn Vietnam to the alien suburbs of Southern Ontario.Tasked with caring for the babies ...
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June 16, 2019Always A Blank Page Waiting
I remember the first time I heard a writer admit that she hated writing. It was 2011, on a panel during the Summer Writing School facilitated by the Creative Writing program at UofT’s School of Continuing ...
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March 03, 2021"I Find it a Kind of Magic" David Stones on the Gift that is Inspiration & Why Amanda Gorman and Leonard Cohen Give Him Hope
David Stones' sfumato: New and Selected Poems (Blue Moon Publishers) collects the most powerful poems from Stones' previous collections and adds engaging new pieces to create a reading experience that ...
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September 21, 2017The Word on the Street interview with Shannon Bramer
Shannon Bramer understands the strange intersection between the sad and the funny, the strange and the precious. Hence the title of her fourth collection of poetry, Precious Energy (BookThug), which ...
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October 11, 2016The In Character Interview, with Monica Arnaldo
Worry worms its way in with all of us at times, but what if our worries become a little bit over the top? This is the problem Margo encounters in Monica Arnaldo's sweetly funny Margo Thinks Twice (Owl ...
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December 09, 2015Kid Lit Can, with Susan Hughes: Spotlight on 3 Picture Book Creators (2016 Blue Spruce Award Nominees), (Part 2)
Welcome! Today I continue my chat with the three accomplished creators whose picture books have been nominated for the Ontario Library Association 2016 Blue Spruce Award: Sangeeta Bhadra, Elly MacKay ...
