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May 03, 2021
Mental Health Awareness for Writers - not such a crazy idea.
The night I started planning my posts for this residency, I dreamed I was at a writers’ festival. A poet told me she wished she could tell stories – I said, ‘Every poem you write tells a story!’ ...
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April 10, 2024Mentorship: Part I
I’m deep in the weeds on a WIP and have been struggling to figure out what it needs, and what I need to get it to where it needs to be. My writing group is amazing, and I’m so grateful to my beta ...
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June 17, 2024Mentorship: Part II - Author Roundtable
After chatting with Rudrapriya Rathore, the founder and manager of the Flying Books Mentorship Program about the value of having a mentor, I turned to fellow authors to chat about what mentorship has ...
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June 21, 2017Meritocracy in a Pale World
Inevitably, I find myself having this conversation:“Why does there always have to be preference or segregation? We should all be judged together and that the best literature will naturally rise to the ...
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August 24, 2017Michelle Berry's Tense New Novel asks us What Our Final Story Would Be
What story would you tell, if you knew it was the last one you would ever get to share? In Michelle Berry's The Prisoner and The Chaplain (Wolsak & Wynn), one man (the titular prisoner) is telling ...
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December 05, 2023Mike Barnes on the Big Books in His Life, Including One Important "Thundering Masterpiece"
Mike Barnes is one of those rare writers who can do it all – in poetry, short fiction, novels, and memoir, he takes readers on nuanced, brainy, powerfully moving journeys. Fiercely intelligent yet consistently ...
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July 30, 2020Mom's Turn
While Accretion, my recently published debut, is a collection of poetry, it’s also a narrative closely based on a really transformative moment in my life a few years back. Given that family and tradition ...
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May 27, 2016Mona Awad Wins the Amazon.ca First Novel Award for 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl
Last night at a reception in Toronto, Mona Awad was awarded the Amazon.ca First Novel Award. This year was a special occasion — it is the 40th anniversary of the award (which has been sponsored by Amazon.ca ...
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September 27, 2016Most Anticipated Books of 2017, Part 1
Some of my favourite writers have new books coming out next year, and I’m so incredibly excited to read them. I had a chance this week to interview Rebecca Rosenblum, about her new novel, So Much Love, ...
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September 28, 2016Most Anticipated Books of 2017, Part 2
Hi Open Book Readers,Following on from Part 1 of this series, I’m also incredibly excited about new books by Richard Rosenbaum (he has two coming out in 2017) and Chris Benjamin. I had a chance to interview ...