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March 05, 2020Book 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, 2021Book 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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February 18, 2021Small 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 27, 2019On Building a House
When I was a young girl throwing myself into books, I I remember how I used to pull random books from library shelves without concern about what the book was about or who wrote it. I ran my hands down ...
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December 12, 2017Publishers and Awards
Though fall isn’t quite as busy a time for children’s literature awards as it is for the adult side of CanLit, the two most prominent prizes, the Governor General’s Literary Awards for text and ...
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July 07, 2017Here’s to Summer! - A Reading List
Usually when the warmer months of the year are upon us, our minds turn to all of that fun, relaxing reading we’ve been putting off. There’s just something about summer that makes us fantasize about ...
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November 30, 2022Book Therapy: Cyclettes
“If I had paused for too long to reflect on whether I was making the ‘right’ choices to optimize satisfaction, I might have become paralyzed in a never doing. Instead I sped towards my hypothetical ...
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July 25, 2016Service Industry Hell (Part 4): T-Shirts Wet and Dry
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 07, 2020Book Therapy: The Wisdom of Children(’s Books)
“I’ll be okay…I’ll be okay…”—Akiko Miyakoshi, The Piano RecitalIt’s probably not surprising that, after eighteen months of extended maternity leave, I’ve found the return to full time ...
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February 03, 2022Book Therapy: The Music Game
“I was a human being, and human beings needed to say goodbye, to get together, to cry in the same room.”—Stéfanie Clermont, The Music GameThis deep into the seemingly never ending story that is ...