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March 19, 2019How Twitter Transformed My Writing Life
“Ugh, I’m on Twitter and I hate it,” I remember telling a friend and fellow writer at her birthday party last year.The room was full of writers and the conversation had somehow shifted to talk about ...
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March 11, 2019Writing and illustrating children’s books: All the surprises
The process of writing, illustrating and publishing a children’s book can be filled with surprises—good and bad! For example, I’m always surprised by how much my heart explodes when a friend sends ...
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February 13, 2019Writing Black Futures: I see you creating strong bonds
In February of 2018 I had curated an event at the Vancouver Public Library called “Where are you really from?” which I hoped would create a safe space for dialogue around what it means to identify ...
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January 24, 2019"You Can Live Whole Other Lives" H.B. Hogan on Discovering the Most Important Books in Her Life
H. B. Hogan's debut collection of stories, This Keeps Happening (Invisible Publishing), is sit-up-and-take-notice short fiction. Assured, wonderfully strange, deftly funny, and totally fresh in both ...
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January 02, 2019Best Canadian Stories Editor Russell Smith on Short Fiction & the Importance of Variety
For more than 45 years, the most interesting, innovative, and memorable short stories of the year have been collected in Best Canadian Stories, with a list of past contributors that includes the likes ...
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December 20, 2018December Spotlight on Excerpts: Get a Taste of We All Need to Eat by Alex Leslie
We're counting down to the holidays the best way we know how - by gifting excerpts from fabulous books! Today is our final instalment for our December spotlight on excerpts and we're finishing with the ...
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December 10, 2018"I Need to be Deep Inside Their Hearts and Minds" Fran Kimmel on Building the Fascinating Characters in No Good Asking
Moving with family to an idyllic farmhouse sounds like a charming idea, but in practice, behind the scenes, Ellie and Eric Nyland's family is unravelling.Fran Kimmel's No Good Asking (ECW Press) opens ...
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November 20, 2018Mike Barnes on Choosing a Deceptively Simple Title for His Book of Letters to Caregivers
Sometimes deft simplicity is where we find the greatest impact when it comes to writing. That proves true in the title of Mike Barnes' Be With: Letters to a Caregiver (Biblioasis). The title Be With ...
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November 05, 2018Kim Trainor on Capturing Both a Tattooed Iron Age Woman & Modern Day Trauma in Her Book Length Poem
In 1993, a Russian scientist discovered the mummified remains of an Iron Age Pazyryk woman. She was covered in tattoos and buried with great ceremony. During the complex and difficult excavation, the ...
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October 31, 2018
We've always been here
My time here is drawing to a close and I’d like to express great thanks to the Open Book team for inviting me to this space for the past month. It’s been a real pleasure and an immense honour to have ...
