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July 06, 2016
What is Literary Fiction? Ask a Romance Publisher
Years ago, I was the guest author at a summer camp for teen writers. The afternoon started well: I read a bit from my first novel, spoke in very general terms about how I became a writer, and outlined ...
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June 21, 2017
The Lucky Seven, with David Sherman
David Sherman's The Alcoholic's Daughter (Guernica Editions) examines a complex relationship that slowly descends from troubled to abusive. From the outside, Annie and Evan have the perfect dynamic. But ...
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July 18, 2016
Service Industry Hell (Part 3): Rats in the kitchen and drunk girls on the floor
A lot of the inspiration for my new book, Congratulations On Everything, came from the things I saw while working in bars, restaurants, and hotels, and from the experiences of friends who did the same. ...
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February 12, 2018
New faces at Annick Press
The last few months have seen some major personnel changes at Annick Press, with the retirement of creative director Sheryl Shapiro and longtime marketing manager Brigitte Waisberg in December. Their ...
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December 14, 2017
Dear UBC Accountable
Dear UBC Accountable,It’s been one year since you released your open letter to UBC, and Canada, and the world. I don’t want to wish you a happy birthday, because it’s not happy. Not for me, and ...
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March 05, 2020
Book Therapy: Shani Mootoo’s Polar Vortex
“The body is always in the moment. It doesn’t care if it was warmer or colder any other time. It’s concerned—a matter of survival, naturally—only with how it is in the present.”—Shani Mootoo, ...
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February 16, 2021
Book Therapy: The Centaur’s Wife
“It isn’t just her own survival she’s thinking about. She’s thinking about everyone else. That’s how they’re all going to survive—by thinking about everyone else.”—Amanda Leduc, The ...
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May 05, 2020
Making Time: Finding Healing with Yayoi Kusama
Yayoi Kusama. You know her. You took a selfie in the Infinity Mirror Room at the AGO. You’ve seen her polka dots all over the Internet. You’ve seen her sobering gaze, her blunt bob.On April 15, Kusama ...
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February 18, 2021
Small gifts from writers: The power of writerly connections
On one especially sunny day when I was a young girl sitting at my kitchen table scribbling stories on the backs of old receipts my mother left on the table, I closed my eyes, looked into the future, and ...
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September 12, 2016
Excerpt from for All the Men (And Some of the Women) I've Known
Hi Open Book Readers,I want to share one of the short stories from For All the Men (and Some of the Women) I've Known.The book is divided into sections: Meeting, Falling In, Falling Out, Friendship and ...