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October 18, 2019Novelist Brenda Brooks on Smoking Like Woolf, Setting Fire to Her Publisher's House, & the Inevitability of Mom Wisdom
In Brenda Brooks' new novel Honey (ECW Press), it's been six long years since the titular Honey disappeared from Nicole's life. When her vanished best friend returns unexpectedly, Nicole is forced to ...
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September 26, 2015Welcome to the Non-Literal World
Recently, when I was in the park with my son, he found me a stone (as he often does). He presented it to me. We’re in the finding and naming stuff stage, so I told him, “stone.” He said, “No. ...
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September 01, 2016The Word on the Street Interview Series: Jowita Bydlowska
On September 25, 2016, Toronto's favourite literary festival The Word on the Street will take over the Harbourfront Centre on Queen Quay West, with dozens of Canada's most talented writers reading, discussing ...
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June 26, 2021What Makes a Good Writing Routine?
As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm fascinated by other people's writing routines. Not only am I just a somewhat nosy person (as many writers are, I imagine), but I don't have much in the way of a ...
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June 27, 2019"I Wanted to Show What an Ongoing Juggling Act It All Is" Lisa de Nikolits on Her Writer for a Year Video Series
Plenty of writers, emerging and established, have questions about how to handle the professional aspects of the writing life. How to approach social media? Are festivals important? What about reviews? ...
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March 09, 2016Kid Lit Can, with Susan Hughes: Sex, and Drugs, and Rock and Roll: Writing Edgy Ya (Part 2)
They’ve written about it all: drugs, gambling, sexual harassment, suicide, sexual abuse, physical abuse, cutting, death, sex, drugs, body image issues, bullying, STDs, abduction...Today I continue my ...
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February 09, 2021Read an Excerpt from Russell Banks' Stunning New Novel of Confession and Secrets, Foregone
Russell Banks is one of American letters' most treasured writers, exploring themes of violence, alienation, luck, and justice, often set against the backdrop of seemingly peaceful small towns in novels ...
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May 03, 2016Some of the Best Books I Ever Read Weren't Books at All
I am on the record—somewhere, or perhaps multiple somewheres—as having said that one of the stories in my first collection, What You Need, represented an effort on my part to capture the feel of a ...
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May 26, 2016Rhubarb Crisp
By some trick of heredity, or upbringing, or brain chemistry, my greatest talent lies in finding the negative in what should be uniformly positive experiences. I'm generally on the hunt, when presented ...
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September 03, 2019
On Beginning and Emerging
This is the first of my posts as September’s Writer-in-Residence for Open Book, and I’m thrilled to have been given this opportunity to share some of my thoughts on writing and the writing life. I ...
