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February 21, 2024
Playwright Jeff D'Hondt On Facing the Truth About a Life Quietly Falling Apart, and Learning How to Heal
After being revived from a coma, Megan lives with traumatic injuries that spur her on to violence. Her physician seeks outside help, finding an Indigenous clinician to treat Megan and to seek innovative ...
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July 31, 2019
Why you should re-read books
I am a big reader, but I am an even bigger re-reader. Yes, I have a mountainous stack of to be read books, but I believe that it’s important to my writing practice—and to my basic existence—to dive ...
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April 09, 2019
Read an Excerpt from the Late Joe Rosenblatt's Final Collection, Bite Me!
Joe Rosenblatt's final book, Bite Me! Musing on Monsters and Mayhem (Porcupine's Quill), published shortly before he passed away in March 2019, is a delight of Rosenblatt's fantastical imagination. Born ...
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November 22, 2018
Calling All Aspiring Authors: Never Ask an Illustrator to Illustrate Your Picture Book for Free
A few weeks ago, I was in a local tavern with some friends—a few of them are professional illustrators. They were drinking overpriced mocktails and commiserating about the emails they get from aspiring ...
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February 13, 2024
"How Much is the Mall to Blame?" Kate Black Makes Sense of Shopping Malls in her New Nonfiction Book
Kate Black grew up in West Edmonton Mall, one of the largest shopping centres in North America, and an object of particular local bemusement, curiosity, disdain, and joy in the city of Edmonton. As someone ...
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August 01, 2015
The Greatest Joy of Writing Is to Occasionally Be out of Your Mind
Writing these posts over the past month has reminded me of something. It seems obvious but I’d forgotten: When writing short pieces for regular publication (in this case, every other day), my writing ...
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February 05, 2021
LOVE IN THE TIME OF COVID: The writing process Part 2 of 9
As an artist of colour, I am acutely aware of how underrepresented our work is in all areas of media. Many times, our work is not funded, ignored, or not reviewed but we forge ahead all the same. I once ...
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December 13, 2016
CanLit's Next Generation: The 2016 Winners of IFOA's Write Across Ontario Student Writing Competition!
Every year, IFOA Ontario's Write Across Ontario student writing competition invites young authors across the province to submit their best work and show us what CanLit has to look forward to. We at Open ...
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November 26, 2020
Laurie Ray Hill, Author of Paper Stones, on How to Combine Personal, Interior Storytelling with Page-Turning Tension
In Laurie Ray Hill's novel Paper Stones (Inanna Publications), Rose has one goal: to protect her baby niece, Jenny. In a family haunted by sexual abuse, Rose is determined the horrific pattern will ...
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May 24, 2022
"You Will Start Writing Again When You're Ready" Dan K. Woo Shares His Inspiring Writing Journey
If Amazon has changed modern life in the West, Taobao, China's massive online marketplace (which is owned by e-commerce giant the Alibaba Group), may have changed the Chinese experience even more. So ...