Search
-
March 25, 2019How to Secure a Literary Agent
With spring just around the corner (we hope), there’s a renewed sense of optimism in the air. Writers are slowly emerging from the depths of their hobbit holes, and some have manuscripts ready to be ...
-
May 11, 2020Goals from another time.
I found this piece of paper recently. I’d made it many years back and stuck it to my wall when I was trying to get organized with my linked short story collection, Coconut Dreams.Some observations:I’d ...
-
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, ...
-
December 19, 2017Monster Ink
Today’s question--what is a monster?There is only one villain in my personal gallery of rogues-- the (ughh!) earwig, which smirks and slithers. Only this horror would appear on a wanted poster in my ...
-
April 29, 2022Book Therapy: Good Mom on Paper
“Children require their parents to search for small moments of peace or grace or dignity. Maybe we can treat creativity the same way: creating the one true thing within a project that is otherwise just ...
-
May 19, 2020Book Therapy: Lean Out by Tara Henley
(T)he notion—singular, unquestioned—that the only way to succeed in any industry, and especially mine, was to give it everything you had.”—Tara Henley, Lean Out By 2016, successful journalist ...
-
April 17, 2019Creative Life
I was asked to give a keynote address at the launch of the student literary journal, Scarborough Fair at the University of Toronto Scarborough. The theme was “The Creative Life”. As their Writer in ...
-
September 09, 2020Book Therapy: Farzana Doctor’s Seven
“As I slip into slumber, listening to my girl breathing beside me, a sensation of well being settles over my skin like a silk sheet.”-Farzana Doctor, SevenThe closer we got to September, the less ...
-
January 19, 2021Book Therapy: 100 Miles of Baseball
“Baseball is about connecting—with people we’ve just met, people we’ll never meet again, people we know, people we love and miss.”—Dale Jacobs and Heidi LM Jacobs, 100 Miles of Baseball In ...
-
May 28, 2021The Writing Moment with... Word Service
“A waste of skin.”That’s what I am. At least according to the Starbucks customer who hurled this insult (and others) at me, when I informed her we were out of honey.According to various customers ...
