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September 16, 2018
Schmoozing for Introverts
It’s that time of year again, when students return to school, the leaves change colour, and Fall Book Season begins.The brilliant Sarah Selecky has already written this excellent antidote to those icky ...
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September 10, 2018
On Kindness, and Generosity
The Toronto literary community has recently lost two very bright lights, mourning the deaths of Priscila Uppal and Ann Ireland.Though I didn’t know either Ann or Priscila all that well, I feel fortunate ...
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August 26, 2020
Dane Swan on Diversity, Good Editing, and His New Anthology
While there is surely a lot of work still to be done, Canadian literature is enjoying a pretty exciting time at the moment. With both large and indie publishers paying greater attention to work by authors ...
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October 02, 2023
Book Launch Season, Part 2: Being an Audience Member
In the first part of “Book Launch Season,” I talked about how to enter this period of time as an author. Writers are (I hope) readers. As a poet especially, going to readings and sitting there as ...
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November 27, 2015
On "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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October 07, 2016
How to keep a small chapbook press alive for twenty-three years (a primer)
By the time you read this, above/ground press will most likely be two or three items away from an accumulated eight hundred publications. How does that happen? Even I find it strange and remarkable that ...
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September 25, 2018
It Begins with the Body author Hana Shafi on Halloween, Karaoke, & Whether Die Hard is a Christmas Movie
Hana Shafi is the hilarious big sister you always wished for. Her frank, smart, relatable poems tackle everything from anxiety to unibrows, unemployment to rushing to throw up in a bar bathroom. It ...
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March 14, 2023
"We Approach the Mystery [of Art] in Bafflement... Not in Sureness": A Conversation with Award-Winning Poet Kate Cayley
Decorated multi-genre writer Kate Cayley's new poetry collection, Lent (forthcoming from Book*hug Press) is one of her most exciting books yet, and that is saying something, given that her previous ...
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September 06, 2018
Anatomy of a Short Story, or Where I Get (Some of) My Ideas
I’m not one of those writers who makes everything up completely from scratch. And seriously, do those writers even exist? (If they do, I am jealous of them.)In my fiction, almost everything comes from ...
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May 16, 2016
Profile on Monty Reid, with a Few Questions
Ottawa poet Monty Reid, who moved to the area in 1999 after spending most of his working life in Alberta, including side trips to British Columbia and Quebec, was originally born in Saskatchewan. He is ...