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September 30, 2014Eppur Si Muove / And yet It Moves
Eppur si muove. And yet it moves. This is what Galileo supposedly said, speaking of the earth, upon being found guilty of heresy in 1633 for promoting the Copernican model of heliocentricity. In its move ...
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September 28, 2014On Janus
Sonnet IVNew yeare forth looking out of Janus gate,Doth seeme to promise hope of new delight:And bidding th’old Adieu, his passed dateBids all old thoughts to die in dumpish sprightAnd calling forth ...
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November 09, 2015At the End of the "DEBRIS" Tour - Notes on My First Rodeo
It has been a few days since my last WIR post, but I promise that this is not because I was just playing video games and drinking beer in my Annex hobbit hole. In fact, I’ve been away at the Wild Writers ...
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June 30, 2019Behind the Title: "Frying Plantain"
This is my last post for Open Book and I’ve been thinking about how I should end my June tenure as Writer in Residence. I landed on writing about the title of my book. I’ve been asked a few times ...
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May 25, 2021"I Felt Like I Had Found a Place" Poet Vanessa Shields on the High Highs and Low Lows of a Life Spent Writing & Publishing
Every family story contains at least one unforgettable character. A person who inspires those who come after with his or her strength, struggles, and legacy. For poet Vanessa Shields, it was her grandmother, ...
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September 27, 2018Coming to Voice
I worked on this piece while at a residency for BIPOC writers in the fall of 2017. I did not pick it up again when I returned. While workshopping it there, I was not convinced it captured what I was trying ...
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October 14, 2015
Should You Hire a Book Publicist?
In my last post, I wrote about some of the questions authors might want to get clear on when it comes to publicising their books, especially when it comes to understand a publisher’s commitment to promoting ...
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January 24, 2017The Fraught Finish Line: Writers talk about the end of the book
The act of finally finishing a book comes with its own unique set of emotions. Some, of course, are fairly obvious—you spend weeks, months, and years of your life on a single project, writing and rewriting, ...
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December 12, 2019Book Therapy: Christy Ann Conlin’s Watermark
“It can always be worse.”-Christy Ann Conlin, Watermark When my grandmother’s memory started to go, she would occasionally become belligerent. The sweet woman I had grown up knowing, the one ...
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May 09, 2016Where We Do What We Do
The first stories of any quality that I produced were written at an old white melamine desk in the windowless furnace room of my future in-laws' house in suburban Ottawa. The hot water tank clicked and ...
