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June 11, 2019Confessions 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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May 27, 2019Contest! Win Autographed YA Novels by Open Book writer-in-residence Alisha Sevigny!
With the sun finally making an appearance, there's no better time to load up on great summer reads - especially young adult tales that will be gobbled up by readers of all ages.We're giving away not one, ...
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May 22, 2019Picture Book Author & Paper Artist Thao Lam on the Books that Shaped Her & the Canadian Illustrator Whose Work Taught Her to Draw
When you read the title of My Cat Looks Like My Dad (Owlkids Books), the latest picture book from acclaimed writer/illustrator Thao Lam, you immediately know you're in for something funny, charming, ...
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April 26, 2019"Inclusion Means More Than Just Checking a Box" FOLD Authors Ferguson, Foster & Rice on CanLit, How They Write & What They're Reading
It's hard to think of a literary event that has grown and expanded as quickly and with as much excitement around it as the The Festival of Literary Diversity (aka the FOLD). In just a few short years, ...
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April 24, 2019What a Poem Does, Not what it Means
In an earlier post, I wrote that both writer and reader should focus more on how a poem comes to be.We seem to spend a disproportionate amount of time trying to understand what a poem means as opposed ...
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April 18, 2019"Because We Exist and It Is Beyond Time": The FOLD's first ever WIR S.K. Ali on Bringing Diverse Books to Young Readers
Canada's most innovative literary festival, the FOLD (the festival of literary diversity) continues to evolve and add new elements every year. One of the brand new additions for 2019 is the festival's ...
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April 16, 2019A Poem is a Rhetoric of Substance and Selection
We shape and are shaped by language. It orients who and where we are.The operational shape of a poem’s plan is always emergent; its layering is a rhetoric of substance and selection:POETIC LAYERINGdiscovery ...
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April 12, 2019A Map of Reading From Zero to Infinity
“Modern reading is a silent and solitary activity. Ancient reading was usually oral, either aloud, in groups, or individually.” (Paul Saenger’s Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading)Around ...
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April 02, 2019Poetry Intelligence and the Intelligence of Poetry
In fifty years, poetry will no longer resemble what we read today. Let’s riff a bit on some serious, playful, and radical thinking about how poetry, language and reading are changing, as well as ...
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February 16, 2019Poetry School: Denise Levertov on form as a revelation
After reading poet Denise Levertov’s 1965 essay “Some Notes on Organic Form,” I had a revelation: I write poetry mainly in organic form. Given that the notion of the work of art as a self-germinating ...
