Search
-
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 ...
-
July 25, 2023Read an Excerpt from Denise Da Costa's And the Walls Came Down, an Absorbing Portrait of East Toronto in the 90s
A diary can be a powerful portal. In Denise Da Costa's And The Walls Came Down (Dundurn Press), Delia Ellis returns to her childhood home in east Toronto, years after making her ways through the trials ...
-
March 10, 2020Kids Club: Bree Galbraith Teaches Kids to Stand Up and Speak Out In Her New Book
Empathizing with others and speaking out against injustice are central themes to author Bree Galbraith's newest book Usha and the Stolen Sun (Owlkids).Little Usha's town has been deprived of sunlight ...
-
June 18, 2020Sue Macartney on Loving Yourself, Funny Birds, and Her Favourite Writing Partner
Benjamin, the central character in author and illustrator Sue Macartney's new picture book Benjamin's Blue Feet (Pajama Press), is a blue-footed booby — a seabird native to the South Pacific. While ...
-
August 03, 2021In Praise of Editors
I believe the most important relationship in publishing is between the author and the editor. It’s a fundamental partnership that turns ideas into prose and drafts into polished works. When the editing ...
-
November 13, 2018"Characters Come to Me Already Having Lives of Their Own" Kagiso Lesego Molope on her Poignant South African LGBT Novel
In Kagiso Lesego Molope's Such a Lonely, Lovely Road (Mawenzi House), Kabelo Mosala is the perfect child. His parents love to show him off, from his early school achievements to when he brings home ...
-
October 28, 2022Halloween Special: CanLit's Smart & Bold New Horror Queen, Erica McKeen, on Isolation, Manipulation, & Female Rage
It's spooky season and to pay tribute to the literary greats who have scared us over the years, we're speaking with one of Canada's newest and most exciting voices when it comes to creating tension and ...
-
February 21, 2022
*Well, excuuuse me, Princess
Welcome back, Open Book reader. Lovely to see you again, hope you’re doing well. As promised, I’m going to give some insight into what fuels all this nerdiness I’m brimming with. The relatively ...
-
June 01, 2022Excerpt: Merilyn Simonds Explores the Spectacular Life of Louise de Kiriline Lawrence, a Woman Ahead of Her Time, in a Meditative New Biography
There are some lives that are so fantastical, so packed with passion and strange turns and reinventions, that they are hard to summarize. Such is the life of Louise de Kiriline Lawrence, a Swedish aristocrat ...
-
February 02, 2022Fairy Tale Lovers' Delight: Read an Excerpt from Kat Sandler's Dark & Funny Play, Yaga
The story of Baba Yaga, the forest-dwelling witch who grinds bones in her chicken-legged house, is one of the most enduring, strange, and iconic images from world folklore, and that's saying a lot. So ...
