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March 29, 2021
Writing/Not Writing
Some language cracks the shell of a thing open, so we can newly see what’s being described. And some language forms a perfect egg shell around what it aims to describe, obscuring more than it reveals. ...
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March 29, 2021
Speaking Your Story into Existence
Over the winter I was part of two separate online writing residencies through the Banff Centre. Each cohort involved wonderfully talented writers from across the land, sharing their stories, truths, and ...
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March 25, 2021
"Listening to the Voices of These Women Might Shift Discussions" Natasha Bakht Tackles the Canadian Niqab Controversy in Her New Book
University of Ottawa law professor Natasha Bakht, who holds the Shirley Greenberg Chair for Women and the Legal Profession, has spent years advocating for both women's rights and religious freedom. Her ...
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March 24, 2021
"The Setting Chose Me" Lynne Golding on Her Final Love Letter to Both Brampton History & Her Family's Vibrant Stories
After spending three full books with her characters, it is a bittersweet triumph for Lynne Golding to see them off in the final instalment of her Beneath the Alders trilogy: The Mending (Blue Moon Publishers) ...
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March 19, 2021
"I Adore Their Fortitude, Ferocity, Verve, and Heart" Christy Ann Conlin on Her Past Characters Returning in Her Gripping New Novel
Coming off the success of her 2019 short story collection (not to mention her two widely-praised novels that preceded it), Christy Ann Conlin is back this season with The Speed of Mercy (House of ...
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March 16, 2021
"Our Shared Past and Future" James Gladstone's Halley's Comet Picture Book Offers Historical Perspective
Halley's Comet, possibly the most famous celestial event in existence, and one which happens just once every 75 years, is a unique phenomenon. It has been dazzling onlookers for centuries, and its story ...
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March 13, 2021
Permission to dream
When I started writing, I didn’t understand the invisible work. The models of labour I was most familiar with—whether in a coffee shop, at a hotel, in a firehall, or at a construction site—were, ...
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March 10, 2021
A "Book Behind Which No Part of Me Could Hide": Andrea Actis' Poetic Memoir of Grief & Loss is Stunning
Content warning: death in the family, grief. It's an unimaginable scene: returning home one night in 2007, Andrea Actis entered her Vancouver apartment to discover her father, lying dead. The aftermath ...
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March 09, 2021
A love letter (to books)
The first quote-unquote serious novel I read was One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. My eighth grade teacher set down a box at the front of the classroom and, in a seemingly ...
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March 08, 2021
On Giving Myself Permission Not to Write
I know I have to write it. The essay I’ve been trying to write for a year and a half.I will be in the grocery store or out in the muck of a hike dripping with sweat and a sentence of it will come to ...