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November 06, 2018An Interview with Paul Vermeersch
Self-Defense for the Brave and Happy, the sixth collection by poet, professor, artist and editor. Paul Vermeersch, feels like a flashlight found in a blackout. By his own admission, when writing the poems, ...
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March 05, 2019An Interview with Ashley Obscura
“What place does the slow-moving technology of love have in our world?” Plainspoken but never simplistic, the writing of Ashley Obscura and her press, Metatron, is emblematic of many of the young ...
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February 19, 2010"A movie Began to Play Out in My Mind’s Eye": Kathleen Grissom on Her Novel, The Kitchen House
Kathleen Grissom talks about reading, writing, the inspiration for her first novel, The Kitchen House (Simon & Schuster), and the research she did while writing her book.Q:How did you come to write ...
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March 08, 2018
Write well, write better, write often.
In my introductory Q&A I gave an abbreviated account of how I write, and in particular how I wrote my first novel. I always find other writers’ processes interesting, so I thought I’d talk about ...
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July 13, 2018An interview with Klara du Plessis
“It’s Very Common for me to Constantly Switch Codes While Thinking.”The poems in Klara du Plessis’ debut collection, Ekke, treat translation like ekphrasis, exploring in English the impossibilities ...
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May 18, 2021Sink into a Dark, Tense, & Brilliantly Crafted Family Mystery with an Excerpt from The Good Son by Carolyn Huizinga Mills
For three decades, Zoe has harboured a secret about her brother. By now, she's almost forgotten, assuming that life has moved on. But when the investigation into the death of her family's erstwhile neighbour, ...
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June 02, 2022Janet Calcaterra on Crafting a Powerfully Intimate Novel Exploring the Legacy of War and Secrets
The myths and silences that grow up around family secrets can be like knots – tightening, fraying, and tangling over time until they seem impossible to unravel. In Janet Calcaterra's riveting family ...
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January 21, 2021"I Can’t Help but Care, and So I Write and I Speak Up" Elizabeth Allua Vaah on the Power of Titles & Motherhood
In a small village in Ghana, an 18-year old widow makes a vow to change not only her fate but the fates of her children and many women around her. Young Ahu has no choice to remarry, but in every other ...
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March 18, 2018
A picture prompts a thousand words.
Readers of The Bone Mother will know that a significant part of the book’s effectiveness lies in the beautiful, unsettling archival photographs that illustrate the sections that are sent in and around ...
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August 04, 2020My Attraction to Gritty Stories
Not all stories are romantic or are tied up neatly at the end. Sometimes characters do not have a redeeming quality, and sometimes their experiences have made them hard and difficult to “save.” Gritty ...
