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August 09, 2018Claudia Dey's Triumphant Return to the Novel with Heartbreaker
Claudia Dey's Stunt was an innovative, genre-pushing, wonderfully strange gem of a novel. After a few years spent on other endeavours, including acclaimed non-fiction, playwriting, and her successful ...
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January 10, 2019Daylighting Chedoke Author John Terpstra on Scattering Seeds for a Great Title
Hamilton is well known for its natural beauty, from waterfalls to parks. However, one natural feature in the city is more hidden than the rest: Chedoke Creek runs through Hamilton but is mostly covered ...
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May 02, 2019Facing the Double-Headed Dragon: Perfectionism and Fear
Guys. My last few weeks have been bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S. I am feeling a bit overwhelmed, so I hope you will all bear with me this month. There may be some punctuation errors here and there. Even a typo ...
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September 25, 2018It Begins with the Body author Hana Shafi on Halloween, Karaoke, & Whether Die Hard is a Christmas Movie
Hana Shafi is the hilarious big sister you always wished for. Her frank, smart, relatable poems tackle everything from anxiety to unibrows, unemployment to rushing to throw up in a bar bathroom. It ...
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August 31, 2018On the future of Canlit
You guys, this is my last Open Book column.I have been writing this column for a year now and I’ll admit I didn’t know what I was going to write about when Holly Kent and Kevin Hardcastle asked me ...
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May 31, 2019The Mindful Writer and the Desire To Publish
This is my last post with Open Book. I tried to approach my residency by writing about things that writers might find useful, or at least semi-entertaining. And I find it amusing that just like being ...
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May 26, 2019The Devil is in the Details - Researching and Writing Your Novel
If you’ve been reading my other posts you’ve probably noticed that my upcoming book THE LOST SCROLL OF THE PHYSICIAN is set in Ancient Egypt. The Second Intermediate Period, to be precise. Unfortunately, ...
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February 19, 2019On Burnout
I’ve finished my first book. I’ve done the writing, the rewriting, the editing, more rewriting, the copy editing, the fact checking… I think you get the point. It was a lot of work. But now I’m ...
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May 16, 20195 Tips on the Editing Process
Edits, edits everywhere, and several drops to drink...The final edit of the interior pages of my new middle grade adventure, THE LOST SCROLL OF THE PHYSICIAN, is due this Monday.Now is the time when I ...
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April 16, 2019A Poem is a Rhetoric of Substance and Selection
We shape and are shaped by language. It orients who and where we are.The operational shape of a poem’s plan is always emergent; its layering is a rhetoric of substance and selection:POETIC LAYERINGdiscovery ...
