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February 02, 2022
OLA Announces 2022 Evergreen Award Nominees
The Ontario Library Association’s (OLA) Forest of Reading, known for their prestigious literary awards for KidLit and Young Adult books, also awards an annual adult book prize (open to both fiction ...
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May 14, 2018
In Praise of … Rewriting. No, Actual Rewriting
Everybody says to do it. No matter where my writing life has taken me, the message, the orthodoxy, the shibboleth, has always been the same. Journalism profs have said it. Writing manuals spell it out ...
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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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March 23, 2014
Cormac Mccarthy: "the Ugly Fact Is Books Are Made out of Books"
Before the publication and Oprahfication of The Road, and the Oscar success of No Country For Old Men, Cormac McCarthy was a critically-loved but relatively obscure novelist, unknown outside hardcore ...
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May 24, 2024
A Discussion of Blasphemy and Other Ancestors: 4 Novellas by Padgett Powell, Darius James, Lee Henderson, & Jean Marc Ah-Sen
"It's the fate that awaits us all," says Jean Marc Ah-Sen of the four novellas in Blasphemy and Other Ancestors (Gordon Hill Press), written by him, Padgett Powell, Darius James, and Lee Henderson, explaining ...
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January 24, 2019
"You Can Live Whole Other Lives" H.B. Hogan on Discovering the Most Important Books in Her Life
H. B. Hogan's debut collection of stories, This Keeps Happening (Invisible Publishing), is sit-up-and-take-notice short fiction. Assured, wonderfully strange, deftly funny, and totally fresh in both ...
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November 20, 2018
Mike Barnes on Choosing a Deceptively Simple Title for His Book of Letters to Caregivers
Sometimes deft simplicity is where we find the greatest impact when it comes to writing. That proves true in the title of Mike Barnes' Be With: Letters to a Caregiver (Biblioasis). The title Be With ...
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May 24, 2018
In Praise of … Reading Widely
I wonder if other writers feel a particular dread I sometimes get when I’m working on a new story or poem. It happens when an idea, or an approach, or a certain trope comes into my mind, one that suddenly ...
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May 08, 2020
When My Mind is Frenzied, I Don’t Read—I Listen
Being read to is a luxury.Growing up, there were no bedtime stories in my household, at least none that I can remember. There were true stories traded around dinner tables of course, but there was none ...
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April 25, 2018
In Praise of … Generosity
I’ve been told I sometimes need to tone it down in the hospitality department when entertaining company at our place. I am told this by my wife, acclaimed novelist and short story writer Rebecca Rosenblum, ...