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October 18, 2018
My friend Richard
In my last post I talked about some of the influential writers and books that inspired me to seriously pursue my own creative writing. My list is much longer than that, and there are many more storytellers ...
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October 30, 2018
SK Dyment on Crafting Characters in Steel Animals, a Smart, Hilarious New Book of Queer Magic Realism
Jackie is a quiet loner who happens to secretly be a badass bank robber. Vespa is a artist who rides motorbikes and obsessively plans her revenge on an ex-partner. Together, they find love and a heap ...
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April 05, 2019
Don’t Stand Too Close to this Poetry!
Your computer/tablet/phone are listening . . . and learning . . . and not always in the way you might expect it to benefit you.Bruce Schneier wrote that “Surveillance is the business model of the internet.”Search ...
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April 09, 2019
Read an Excerpt from the Late Joe Rosenblatt's Final Collection, Bite Me!
Joe Rosenblatt's final book, Bite Me! Musing on Monsters and Mayhem (Porcupine's Quill), published shortly before he passed away in March 2019, is a delight of Rosenblatt's fantastical imagination. Born ...
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June 11, 2019
Confessions of an Uncertain Booklover
All my life, I’ve considered myself to be a booklover. Even my twitter handle has the word ‘literati’ in it (don’t judge me. I was a pretentious undergrad when I came up with it). English was ...
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April 17, 2019
Read Three Powerful Poems from Treaty# by Armand Garnet Ruffo
What does the word treaty mean? Deceptively simple, it's a word with great weight and Armand Garnet Ruffo spreads the word and its meaning open in his powerful new poetry collection Treaty# (Wolsak ...
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June 28, 2019
Navigating Microaggressions as a Black Writer in CanLit
Story time! Yesterday evening, I had the pleasure of doing a talk with the wonderful and talented Olive Senior and I was excited because it was held in the same neighbourhood where my protagonist, Kara, ...
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November 26, 2019
Read an Excerpt from Richard Harrison's 25: Hockey Poems, New and Revised
Winter is fast approaching, and for many Canadians that means bundling up, strapping on some skates and hitting the ice. From highly-organized leagues to friendly pick-up games on a local pond, our nation's ...
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March 23, 2020
On Road Maps
Before beginning a project, is it worthwhile to do a detailed outline? Or is it preferable just to dive in? I’ve tried both approaches. In writing my first novel, After the Bloom, I outlined extensively. ...
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April 14, 2020
Simina Banu Explores Love's Messy Aftermath in Her New Collection
When the acrid smoke of a painful breakup finally clears, what can be salvaged in its wake? It's in this new wasteland of junk food, lies, and other detritus that author Simina Banu's debut full-length ...