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March 11, 2019Writing and illustrating children’s books: All the surprises
The process of writing, illustrating and publishing a children’s book can be filled with surprises—good and bad! For example, I’m always surprised by how much my heart explodes when a friend sends ...
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December 12, 2019Poets in Profile: Tanis MacDonald Talks Key Narratives, Taking Your Time, and the Importance of Community
Poet and author Tanis MacDonald's newest collection, Mobile (Book*hug Press), delves into both the historical and modern experiences of women working and living in Toronto, casting their stories against ...
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August 05, 2016Debby Florence on Canadian Poetry
As someone who was crazy about a lot of American poets from a very young age, I'm still caught off-balance when an American turns out to be a big fan of Canadian poetry. debby florence is one such American. ...
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October 04, 2022Playwright Natasha Adiyana Morris on The Plays that Shaped Her & Why She Won't Remove Local Culture from Her Work
Playwright Natasha Adiyana Morris' The Negroes Are Congregating (forthcoming from Playwrights Canada Press later this month) became a sensation during its 2020 run at Theatre Passe Muraille. Morris, ...
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July 12, 2023Aaron Tucker Creates an Updated, Nuanced Twist on the Classic Western in His Gripping New Novel
Aaron Tucker's novel Soldiers, Hunters, Not Cowboys (Coach House Books) is a startling and brilliant blend of a book, beginning as a play-like conversation between two ex-partners in which Melanie, a ...
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March 14, 2018
How to hold a launch.
There comes a time in a writer’s life when, if you are very lucky, you will be published (frequently but not always a book) and you may feel the need to draw attention to it with some kind of hoohah. ...
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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 ...
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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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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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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 ...
