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June 06, 2018
"What's Your Story?" Read the Winning Texts of the 2018 OBPO Writing Contest Winners! Part Two: North York
What's better than reading brand new stories from talented Toronto authors? How about reading them for free? We're excited to present, exclusive on Open Book, the second set of winning texts from the Ontario ...
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February 13, 2018
"There are Two Kinds of Characters": Innovative Short Story Author Paige Cooper on Character
If you think a short story collection packed full of police horses with talons, were-deer, and time machine-building nine-year-olds can't be relatable, you clearly haven't read Paige Cooper's Zolitude ...
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May 10, 2022
"No Novel is Perfect" Anita Anand on Learning & Loving the Novel Form
In Anita Anand's A Convergence of Solitudes, the experience of separation, partition, and the longing that divisions can create spirals through multiple generations of a single family and the people ...
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August 24, 2017
Michelle Berry's Tense New Novel asks us What Our Final Story Would Be
What story would you tell, if you knew it was the last one you would ever get to share? In Michelle Berry's The Prisoner and The Chaplain (Wolsak & Wynn), one man (the titular prisoner) is telling ...
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May 02, 2023
Who Gets to Tell Stories? Deborah Dundas Challenges a Collective Reluctance to Talk about Class
These days, Deborah Dundas is known as an acclaimed editor at the Toronto Star, a fixture in the literary and journalistic communities, and a beloved figure who is an insightful, tireless supporter ...
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April 01, 2021
Novelist John Jantunen on Opening Scenes, Naming Murderers After Friends, & the Strange Time He Met His Protagonist in Northern Ontario
In the not too distant future, a prison filled with hardened inmates is suddenly plunged into darkness. The power has mysteriously gone out, and it's not coming back. The guards flee the prison, leaving ...
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July 18, 2024
Meet the Detective at the Heart of a Gripping Noir Mystery by Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson
As the winner of the 2023 Crime Writers of Canada Best Crime Novella Award, author Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson knows how to grip a reader and draw them into a mystery with a deft literary hand. He moves ...
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July 03, 2018
"What's Your Story?" Read the Winning Texts of the 2018 OBPO Writing Contest Winners! Part Three: Scarborough
It's summer and that means the best time to read - whether it's inside with a fan or out in a park or on a beach. So grab your refreshment of choice and find some shade to take in four brand new, exclusive, ...
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June 30, 2021
Simon Rolston Examines the Complex History and "Fraught Literary Territory" of Prison Life Writing
Prison life writing—personal nonfiction written by imprisoned people—can be considered a unique genre under the larger umbrella of memoir. Complex, politically and emotionally charged, and at times ...
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November 30, 2021
Daniel Scott Tysdal Examines the Darkness, Strangeness, & Flickering Hope of Life in the 21st Century in His Spectacular Debut Story Collection
Daniel Scott Tysdal is a beloved creative writing professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough and a decorated poet. And of course, Tysdal is also an Open Book columnist and the subject of one ...