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April 02, 2019Poetry Au Naturel: Poets Tell us About Their Nature-Themed Favourites for National Poetry Month
The theme for National Poetry Month 2019 is "celebrate nature with poetry". While nature poetry might have a reputation as sleepy and traditional, great writers have often mined the natural world for ...
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August 20, 2020Read an Excerpt from John Bentley Mays' The Occidental Hotel
In the late John Bentley Mays' final book, The Occidental Hotel (Guernica Editions), a grizzled, racist criminal evades capture by holing up in a long-abandoned hotel, once a dazzling building that hosted ...
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September 02, 2020Combat Populism with an Excerpt from Jonathan Manthorpe's Restoring Democracy in an Age of Populists and Pestilence
It's been hard to miss the rising tide of populism that has crept into democratic discourse in North American and Europe in the past decade. What to do about it and what it means are trickier challenges, ...
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October 20, 2020Mark Kingwell on How the Pandemic Will Change Our Understanding of Risk and Luck
Professor and writer Mark Kingwell is well known as one of Canada's leading thinkers, and he is almost certainly our most fun one. Whether it's baseball or cocktails, philosophy or futurism, Kingwell's ...
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September 23, 2021"It’s All About Having a Laugh and Experimenting" Poet MLA Chernoff on Affect Apocalypses, the Meaning of Squelch, and More
MLA Chernoff's debut full length poetry collection, the delightfully titled [SQUELCH PROCEDURES] (Gordon Hill Press) explores childhood and identity, touching on gender norms, trauma, poverty, and more ...
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July 28, 2017August writer-in-residence Naseem Hrab on a Cake that Became a Boy & Her First Picture Book
In Ira Crumb Makes a Pretty Good Friend (OwlKids), the debut picture book by Naseem Hrab (illustrated by Josh Holinaty), Ira is the new kid in town. When he realizes that could mean a lonely time at ...
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October 27, 2017How My Version of the Canlit Community Sustains Me
Two months ago, one of my best friends was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia. She is a mother. She is a prolific, brilliant writer. And she was my very first writer friend.We first met working ...
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February 16, 2018On reading politically, or why the good old days are a flat out lie
It’s a funny time in the world of words. Every morning, when I log into Twitter, people are debating freedom of expression and the politics of how we read. Some of this is just nonsense, really just ...
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February 05, 2013I Have No Idea What I'm Doing
As someone who spends a good part of their life and career on the internet, I have a sneering, love-hate relationship with memes. Many of them are misused and go off the rails, but a good one can be golden. ...
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December 16, 2011The Pros (and Sometimes Pratfalls) of Giving Your Books to the Library
In a fit of pre-Christmas cleaning I decided to donate some unwanted books to a good cause. My bookshelves were weeded out and a giant bag of donations was duly packed, ready for transportation to my ...
