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December 20, 2023The Transition to Short Stories (as a poet)
I’ve spent years now honing my craft as a poet. I know how to edit individual poems, as well as to approach and rewrite entire manuscripts. Why did the need to do the same in fiction seem so daunting ...
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January 05, 2024An Ode to Writing Research
I have realized that second only to holding a bound book in my hands, my favourite part of writing a book is the research. I love choosing worlds that I don’t know much about—rare books libraries, ...
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December 27, 2017Reading Books While Desperately Avoiding Loneliness
There was a tree surrounded by countless of its kind, but also all alone, as the only one alive. Its nearby kin debarked and digested, steamed into slop, robbed of their resin and lignin, cleaned, screened, ...
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June 18, 2010Nights Below Front Street East
This article is a part of rob's personal essay series, "Sleeping in Toronto." Leader Lane leads south to Wellington and across Berzcy Park to Front Street East. For most of the 19th c. Front ...
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October 19, 2016On Writing, with Deni Ellis Béchard
Deni Ellis Béchard is a Commonwealth Writers' Prize-winning fiction writer and an acclaimed journalist whose work has taken him around the world. His newest book is the novel Into the Sun (House of ...
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November 11, 2016
My Inspiration--"...look at me Leonard"
By Bianca Lakoseljac: Writer in Residence A poet, a musician, a novelist, a philosopher in his own way—a Canadian icon! A man. Yet, why do I think of Leonard Cohen as more than a man—as an immortal? ...
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March 11, 2018
Escape from reality: Conventions, conferences and expos.
I haven’t spoken about it a whole lot, but just a few months before the The Bone Mother’s release, my mother died. While not unexpected, it was unpleasant, and of course brought a lot of memories ...
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October 18, 2018"Dreaming of the Day I’d Get to Be on That Stage" Talking Festivals, Writing Tips & Nerves with 3 TIFA Guest Authors
October 18 marks the launch of the 39th edition of the Toronto International Festival of Authors - but in a way, this is also year one for the newly re-branded and re-imagined festival (formerly known ...
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November 01, 2018
A Question of Motivation
If you ask any group of people about future goals they hope to one day accomplish, one of the most frequent responses would probably be that they’d like to write a book. Some of them may have ideas, ...
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January 15, 2019Read an Excerpt of Leon Rooke's The House on Major Street
Leon Rooke has been an important part of the Toronto literary scene for decades, so it is perfectly fitting that his newest novel, The House on Major Street (Porcupine's Quill) has an unapologetically ...
