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June 14, 2018Father's Day at Open Book: Six Unforgettable Fathers in Literature
Just as in real life, there are no two dads exactly alike in literature. From the terrifying to the brave, the disinterested to the inspiring, father characters have been some of the most interesting ...
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May 14, 2018
In Praise of … Rewriting. No, Actual Rewriting
Everybody says to do it. No matter where my writing life has taken me, the message, the orthodoxy, the shibboleth, has always been the same. Journalism profs have said it. Writing manuals spell it out ...
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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 21, 2018
In Praise of … Performing Your Work
A passion for public speaking, for public performance, has been with me even longer than the passion for writing. I trace it back to when I won a public speaking competition as an elementary school student ...
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May 17, 2019Bindu Suresh on Her Gorgeous Debut Novel, 26 Knots, a Love Letter to Montreal
26 Knots (Invisible Publishing) by Bindu Suresh is one of those debuts that you just can't miss. Full of complicated romantic situations with many more sides than a mere triangle, and set against a backdrop ...
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May 20, 2019Stay Healthy, My (Writer) Friends...
Writing can be an actual pain in the butt. I suffer from random attacks of spasming glutes and when they flare, it’s downright debilitating. Like, my husband has to carry me up and down the stairs, ...
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April 17, 2019Read Three Powerful Poems from Treaty# by Armand Garnet Ruffo
What does the word treaty mean? Deceptively simple, it's a word with great weight and Armand Garnet Ruffo spreads the word and its meaning open in his powerful new poetry collection Treaty# (Wolsak ...
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April 23, 2019Literary Road Trip Destination: Talking about Prince Edward County's "County Reads" Festival with Barbara Sweet
There's more than wine, bike tours, and golden beaches in Prince Edward County. Fast becoming a centre for the arts in Ontario, one highlight of the County's jam-packed arts calendar is the County Reads ...
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June 20, 2019"The Downton Abbey of India" Sohan S. Koonar on His Powerful Historical Novel Paper Lions, Sikh Representation in Literature, & More
The years from 1939, the beginning of the Second World War, into the 1960s were a time of enormous change. And that change was by no means limited to the war and its aftermath in Europe. In his new novel Paper ...
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November 13, 2019Home
This October I travelled to Calgary from my home in Kingston to do some book promotion and to catch up with my family and cherished friends. It had been a little over a year since I’d returned home, ...
