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October 18, 2019Novelist Brenda Brooks on Smoking Like Woolf, Setting Fire to Her Publisher's House, & the Inevitability of Mom Wisdom
In Brenda Brooks' new novel Honey (ECW Press), it's been six long years since the titular Honey disappeared from Nicole's life. When her vanished best friend returns unexpectedly, Nicole is forced to ...
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August 08, 2017Read an Excerpt from Oisín Curran's forthcoming Blood Fable!
Today we have a sneak peek at an exciting Fall 2017 book from BookThug: Oisín Curran's Blood Fable will be released in October, but you can read an excerpt now, exclusively on Open Book. In Blood ...
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March 14, 2014
The Reading Rulebook
I used to go to a lot of public readings of poetry and fiction. Then I had kids, and rarely went, but recently, due to changing circumstances, I've been out to a few more, and what hasn't changed are ...
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November 27, 2015On "Fiction" - Writing from Real Life
Over the past while I’ve noticed a number of situations where an author is asked about the autobiographical or non-fiction elements in their books. It has always been something that people are interested ...
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April 17, 2018Laurel Croza on Tasty Book Snacks, Finding the Romance, & the Book She Holds as a "Model of What a Kid’s Book Can Be"
Laurel Croza has become a beloved name in picture books through I Know Here (illustrated by Matt James), which won the prestigious Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award (amongst many other honours), and ...
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July 30, 2018
The Part of It You Don't See
If you’ve been reading my dispatches over the last month, you might have inferred that making a go of it as a writer is hard. Bending reality, memory, knowledge and experience into believable fiction, ...
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February 04, 2020"I Would Watch Icebergs Calf and Moan, Float by as If Apparitions" Read an Excerpt from Laisha Rosnau's Little Fortress
Based upon real events, award-winning author Laisha Rosnau's newest novel Little Fortress (Wolsak & Wynn) follows the journey of the Caetanis, an aristocratic Italian family who fled the rise of fascism ...
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March 18, 2014
Writing Sex
"And Panhuyzen really gives good sex.” ~National Post, August 1999 Sex! Did you hear that, sex! We’re talking about sex today. Oh, what’s that, you don’t want to talk about sex? Well, too bad, ...
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January 05, 2023Karin Wells on the Incredible, Overlooked Women in Canadian History
No one wants to read a book with half the pages ripped out. And yet that is how we're often taught history in Canada – with the accomplishments and stories of women minimized and ignored. In More Than ...
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July 25, 2023Read an Excerpt from Denise Da Costa's And the Walls Came Down, an Absorbing Portrait of East Toronto in the 90s
A diary can be a powerful portal. In Denise Da Costa's And The Walls Came Down (Dundurn Press), Delia Ellis returns to her childhood home in east Toronto, years after making her ways through the trials ...