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December 12, 2024
In Dangerous Memory, Charlie Angus Unpacks the 1980s and the Many Ways that the Decade Still Haunts Us
Coming of age in the 1980s is something that if often seen romanticized or parodied in popular culture, with some of the more ridiculous and lively touchstones of the era featured in film, literature, ...
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May 23, 2018
Talking Short Fiction with the 2018 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award Finalists
There is short list of literary awards in Canada that serve as reliable prognosticators of future CanLit heavy hitters. One of them is the $10,000 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award, awarded to fiction and poetry ...
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March 10, 2017
What I Wish Someone Had Told Me about Becoming a Writer #2: Elisabeth de Mariaffi
In my early 30s I went back to school to do my MFA at the University of Guelph-Humber. I was afraid I'd be older than everyone else in my cohort, and thus I was happy to meet a contemporary in Ken Babstock's ...
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March 25, 2018
There's a lot to be said for not knowing what you're doing.
I’ve been writing professionally for nearly 40 years now, across a variety of media, and even now, every time I start a new project, it’s as if I’ve never written anything before in my life. I generally ...
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July 10, 2018
Did You Really Go Through All That?
I stole the title of this post from a scene late in the film Sideways, but I could’ve taken a similar line from nearly anywhere—for instance, the second of Orhan Pamuk’s Norton Lectures (collected ...
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March 11, 2018
Escape from reality: Conventions, conferences and expos.
I haven’t spoken about it a whole lot, but just a few months before the The Bone Mother’s release, my mother died. While not unexpected, it was unpleasant, and of course brought a lot of memories ...
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September 13, 2022
Leslie Kern's New Book Challenges Assumptions about Gentrification & Offers Hope in the Face of Rampant Housing Inequality
Gentrification, and the massive housing affordability crisis to which it is related, is an issue plagued with myths and misunderstandings. As we enter an era where housing has become unaffordable for ...
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February 22, 2019
Excerpt! Get Hooked on the Mystery in Ann Lambert's Dark Quebec Tale, The Birds That Stay
In the opening of Ann Lambert's The Birds that Stay (Second Story Press), Louis Lachance sneaks away while his wife is sleeping - not for an affair, but to take one more job as a handyman. Instead of ...
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October 02, 2024
Toronto artist Sam Chaiton Explores How Profound Trauma Shapes a Famiy in his new Memoir, We Used to Dream of Freedom
Our featured author today is no stranger to the trials and tribulations of oppressed peoples, and his actions throughout a long and varied artistic career bear that out clearly. Perhaps most known for ...
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March 08, 2022
"As He Watched, Envy Stirred in His Heart" Read an Excerpt from A Bend in the Breeze by Valerie Sherrard
After decades of prophecy, the residents of a remote island have finally found what has been foretold: the Long Awaited, who will tell them their fate 17 days after appearing, has arrived in a boat drifting ...