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February 10, 2022Excerpt Month: Witty, Tough, Flirty, and Wise - Don't Miss a Glimpse of Leon Rooke's Rank Songbirds
As we continue with our February spotlight on excerpts, we would be remiss if we forgot our poetry lovers. Today's excerpt, from CanLit icon Leon Rooke's Rank Songbirds (Porcupine's Quill), will give ...
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March 15, 2022"I Saw That Language Could Break and Be Reassembled" Prathna Lor on Early Reading & Their Poetry Debut
A debut collection of poetry is always something exciting; a chance to inhabit a new perspective, a new way of processing and experiencing the world, while getting those great literary shivers over a ...
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May 10, 2022Genres You Didn’t Learn About in Kidlit 101
One of the most formative experiences in my development as a writer was working in a bookstore. For four glorious years I was the manager of the award-winning, much beloved Flying Dragon Bookshop in Toronto. ...
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May 29, 2022
Weird is the New Normal
“People are strange,” Jim Morrison of The Doors famously sang, “when you’re a stranger.” He would know. This is the man who, despite his reputation for wild antics on stage, sang some of his ...
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June 13, 2022Feel the Power of Indigenous Spoken Word in an Excerpt from Slam Coalkan Performance Poetry
Back in 2021, the Festival of the Peripheries (FLUP) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and the Toronto International Festival of Authors (TIFA) came together to stage a spectacular poetry happening: 17 Indigenous ...
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September 22, 20229 Kidlit Page-To-Screen Adaptations that are just as Good as the Book
Earlier in the month, I had the opportunity to see Lena Dunham’s spirited and loving adaptation of Catherine Called Birdy, Karen Cushman’s novel of the same name, at the Toronto International Film ...
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November 30, 2022Book Therapy: Cyclettes
“If I had paused for too long to reflect on whether I was making the ‘right’ choices to optimize satisfaction, I might have become paralyzed in a never doing. Instead I sped towards my hypothetical ...
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December 29, 2022Book Therapy: Favourites From My Favourites
“It was the book I was always meant to read. It spoke directly to me, braiding so many currents of my own life—messy motherhood, literary research, poetry—into a rich river of language and rhythm ...
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January 18, 2023Deborah Hemming Holds a Mirror Up to Wellness Culture in Her Fascinating Sophomore Novel, Goddess
Contemporary wellness, as a lifestyle and an industry, is a fascinating subculture. With fervent defenders, scammers, dubious science, believers, and deniers all swirling together in one strange (and ...
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February 22, 2023Anuja Varghese on Transformation, Literary Anxieties, and Writing for "Women Who Don’t See Themselves in Most Stories"
When it comes to genre, Anuja Varghese refuses to be penned in. Her debut story collection, Chrysalis (House of Anansi Press) is a highwire feat, balancing the surreal with the realist, the fantastical ...