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July 24, 2014Trash
I have entered middle age. I am overweight, and I live with a little dog and two cats. I have been alone for more than seven years. I keep a journal, as Jenny Craig suggests, about what I eat ...
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July 18, 2014Grounds for Communion
People in grief think a great deal about self-pity. We worry it, dread it, scourge our thinking for signs of it. We fear that our actions will reveal the conditions tellingly described as “dwelling ...
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July 13, 2014Modest Portraits of My Mother
So perhaps my mother doesn’t need to be my queen; simply being my mother is already a lot, even if the rare kisses I place on her cheeks aren’t so majestic. —Kim Thúy, Ru**As a statue:Bootprints ...
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July 11, 2014A Story That No One Owns
I’m sure my point is only too plain… Lizzie is not dead, etc.—but there is a “mixture of fact & fiction,” and you have changed her letters. That is “infinite mischief,” I think…. ...
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July 10, 2014His Gravity
We shun those who bear the mark of death, and this is a form of baseness to which even I succumbed. Quite deliberately, out of a base instinct for self-preservation, I shunned my friend in the last months ...
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July 04, 2014Our Lives of No Interest: the Compulsion to Confess
In middle age there is a mystery, there is mystification. The most I can make out of this hour is a kind of loneliness. Even the beauty of the visible world seems to crumble, yes even love. I feel that ...
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June 30, 2014
A Month in the Life of the Launching Author
Today marks one month since May 31, the official publication date of my new novel The Oakdale Dinner Club, and one month since I started my residency here at Open Book Toronto.Within the month of June, ...
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June 30, 2014
The Dirty Dozen, with Brecken Hancock
June 30, 2014 - Brecken Hancock is Open Book: Toronto's July 2014 writer-in-residence. Get to know her by checking out her edition of our Dirty Dozen interview series!Broom Broom (Coach House Books), ...
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June 28, 2014What to Eat While Reading: Savoury Stilton Pecan Shortbread
My novel The Oakdale Dinner Club is about two women who become friends in their senior year of high school after they hand in identical answer sheets for a math test and are accused of cheating. They ...
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June 27, 2014Forget Cottage Country: 8 Reasons to Summer in the City of Toronto
School’s out and the Canada Day weekend is nigh, but that’s no reason to get out of town. Stay here, and enjoy these only-in-Toronto good things instead:1. Toronto IslandBike down to the ferry docks ...