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June 01, 2021Isolation Creation: How the Pandemic Improved My Writing
Do you remember the person you were before the pandemic? Do you remember making plans, getting excited?The end of 2019 seems like ten years ago, but a couple of things stand out: signing my book deal ...
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November 25, 2021Writing + Joy = A Revelation
For years I believed I was only a writer if I wrote every day. I would wake up early and take my laptop to the coffee shop nearby and sit in the corner and write. Words and words and coffee and more ...
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December 09, 2022On Orpheus & Eurydice, or the Inevitability of Timing
I’ve become superstitious about my novel. I believe that if I look back at the previous pages, I will not be able to write – not even one word to move it forward. After I finish writing for the day, ...
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November 27, 2023I think I have a manuscript
This is what I said to myself about four years into publishing my poems in journals, magazines, and through chapbooks. Sifting through folders to put poems into a single Word document, I saw the page ...
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February 24, 2025Grant Writing 101: Timelines
You’ve got an idea, you’ve got working title, maybe you’ve even got a beta reader, or a mentor lined up. You’ve got your budget planned out (and know how many days/weeks or hours your project ...
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February 27, 2017Featured Video: Matti Friedman on his RBC Taylor Prize nominated military memoir
After moving to Israel from Toronto as a teen, Matti Friedman served three years in the Israeli army. Part of a small group charged with holding a remote Lebanon hilltop (codename "The Pumpkin") Friedman's ...
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March 29, 2017
What I Wish Someone Had Told me About Being a Writer #8: Jen Sookfong Lee
Jen Sookfong Lee was born and raised in Vancouver’s East Side, where she now lives with her son. Her books include The Conjoined, a finalist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, The Better Mother, a ...
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April 09, 2017
Poetry Exercises
Sometimes if I’m feeling stalled in my writing, or when I have a limited block of time in which to write, like an hour at a coffee shop before my fulltime job, I can use some help to get the writing ...
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April 19, 2017Giller Nominee Alix Hawley Wins CBC Short Story Prize
CBC Books announced this morning that the winner of the 2017 CBC Short Story Prize is Alix Hawley of Kelowna, British Columbia for her story "Witching". The story was selected from more than 1800 ...
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October 12, 2016
Norfolk, Murder Mysteries, Birds, and Mimesis
I spent the weekend in Norfolk visiting an old friend. I’ve never been to that part of England before, and because I see the world through a fictional lens, Steve Burrows’ birder mysteries, set in ...