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September 06, 2018Anatomy of a Short Story, or Where I Get (Some of) My Ideas
I’m not one of those writers who makes everything up completely from scratch. And seriously, do those writers even exist? (If they do, I am jealous of them.)In my fiction, almost everything comes from ...
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January 03, 2023How to Get Published in Canada Today: A Conversation with Patricia Westerhof
With three decades of experience teaching creative writing under her belt as well as three acclaimed books, Patricia Westerhof is a very good person to talk to about how to get started (or move forward) ...
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March 24, 2019Writer at Work: Speaking with the Dead
A couple of weeks ago, I had the honour of speaking on panels at Room Magazine’s Growing Room Festival. During a Q&A session with the audience after the intersectionality, diaspora, and Asian-Canadian ...
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February 22, 2016
Read Around The World: Part Two of The Extravagant JT Reading Program That Will Never Be Started or Finished
In my last post, I discussed why I think we all (or at least me in particular) live, read, and write: to develop mutual understanding with other people. I’m someone who has often felt alienated, and ...
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February 18, 2023show and tell – a catalogue of the small animals that live in my house
**This is the result of an exercise I did this week. The exercise was to find objects around the house and write about them. It's a good one for when my brain is moving slow, which it has been. In looking ...
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March 25, 2024On Finding Inspiration Through Deconstruction
In my last column, I talked about the unexpected rewards of returning to the same themes and subject matter in your work. But there’s a related facet to this that I feel deserves its own examination—the ...
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July 23, 2019Why I Don’t Announce My Social Media Breaks
Over the past couple of years, I’ve watched several writers announce that they’re taking a break from social media. Sometimes they edit their profile so that their status, “on hiatus,” is added ...
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April 25, 2014
A Poem Can Be About Anything
I came across a cat writing contest on the internet. At first I thought that the poems had to be written by cats and was sure that my Iris Belle had a stanza or two inside her just waiting to creep out ...
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March 03, 2020Read an Excerpt From Dayle Furlong's Powerful New Collection, Lake Effect
Set in the Great Lakes region, the stories of Toronto-based author Dayle Furlong's new collection Lake Effect (Cormorant Books) follows those on both sides of the border as they struggle with love, fear, ...
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December 05, 2017Take a Tour of Award-Nominated Author Carrie Snyder's Writing Space
Cliffy is excited to tell his parents it is pajama day at school. He loves getting to wear his comfy footy pajamas all day long. The only catch? It's not actually pajama day at all - but the busy and ...
