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November 29, 2019
Fiction, Memory, and Family
I reread books, often because a story or scene moved me and I want to know how the writer engineered it. It’s exciting to flip back to the first page and say, “of course! Of course the story ends ...
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November 23, 2019Getting Over Getting Stuck
That Tiny Life, the title story of my collection, is about family—about distance that grows between families over time. I can tell you that now because the story is written. Writing it, I didn’t know ...
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February 28, 2016
Why Some of the Best Writers I Know Aren't Publishing
Some of the best writers I know are relatively unpublished. They might have a story out here or there, or maybe write professionally in another genre, but they aren’t actively trying to pursue a publisher ...
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February 06, 2016Both Silly and Serious: Part Two of Desert Pets Press in Conversation
Yesterday I posted the first part of an interview with Emma Dolan and Catriona Wright, founders of Desert Pets Press. Catriona talked about their evolution from walkie-talkie using friends to chapbook-making ...
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February 17, 2016
Why Writers Should Be Reading Works in Translation or Part 1 of The Extravagant JT Reading Plan Never to Be Started or Completed
Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about reading because I’ve rekindled that love. I go through phases with reading, as I guess most of do, usually dependent on how engrossed I am in my own projects. ...
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April 29, 2021Your life is yours: a future wish for emerging writers
Today’s the day, friends! This will conclude my residency with Open Book and the Careful Inventory skillshare. I’m very grateful to each of you who have read along and shared your thoughts with me. ...
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June 18, 2024Read an Excerpt from On Canadian Democracy by Jonathan Manthorpe
With democracy creaking in various parts of the world, it seems apt that an exploration of Canada's democratic system, and it's strengths and weaknesses, should be represented by the tumbledown building ...
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January 13, 2021Excerpt: Josée Boileau Exposes Quebec's Dark Response to December 6 in Because They Were Women: The Montreal Massacre
Josée Boileau's Because They Were Women: The Montreal Massacre (Second Story Press, translated by Chantal Bilodeau) takes readers back to one of Canada's darkest days to memorialize the the fourteen ...
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June 13, 2024Ho Ka Kei (Jeff Ho) Tells a Story of Survival and Being in cockroach (曱甴)
After inspiration struck, Ho Ka Kei (Jeff Ho) took to his phone in the night and spoke the monologue for what would become cockroach (曱甴) (Playwrights Canada Press). The result was a thought-provoking ...
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October 30, 2025Melanie Dennis Unrau Excavates History and Language in the Poetics of GOOSE
In the exciting new collection, Goose, poet and researcher Melanie Dennis Unrau reimagines the language of industry as poetry, unearthing new meanings from the pages of Northland Trails by S. C. Ells, ...
