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November 26, 2022
Ask Jane (Agony Aunt)
Hi, I’m Jane, and I’m the protagonist of Helen’s novel, Pull Focus. I’m taking over the blog today to answer questions readers may about me, or the book, or anything else. What’s an Agony ...
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November 30, 2022
Location, Location, Location
I’m writing to you from the plane to London. I’m headed to my favourite city for ten days, following by a few days in Edinburgh visiting friends. Interspersed are trains to Cardiff and Cambridge.It’s ...
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March 02, 2023Safe Spaces Within The Margins
*Content Warning: brief mention of sexual assault, addiction and self harm*Nearly six months after I became the victim of a violent sexual assault in September 2017, I sat on the back porch of our rental ...
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March 14, 20236 Social Media Tips for Authors
I get it. You’ve written, rewritten, and edited your book, and now you have to go out and promote it? Isn’t that someone else’s job? Marketing and publicity teams have all sorts of connections and ...
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April 11, 2023Shakespearean Transformations: All’s Well by Mona Awad
Mona Awad’s 2021 novel, All’s Well, follows a drama professor suffering from chronic pain. She’s staging one of Shakespeare’s plays, All’s Well That Ends Well, which is about an orphan named ...
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October 02, 2023Book 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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March 19, 2024Writing a Love Poem
I’m writing this column on Valentine’s Day, which is important to note because the column will be published well after Valentine’s Day. Writing a love poem isn’t limited to a specific day, however, ...
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March 25, 2024On Finding Inspiration Through Deconstruction
In my last column, I talked about the unexpected rewards of returning to the same themes and subject matter in your work. But there’s a related facet to this that I feel deserves its own examination—the ...
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September 30, 2024Four Weird Tricks for Maintaining Writing Momentum
As someone who doesn’t have a set writing routine, I’m always on the lookout for practical strategies to consistently keep my work going. Today I’d like to share four of my favourite tricks for ...
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March 24, 2025Finding a Press for Your Poetry Manuscript
In one of my first columns as an Open Book columnist, I shared my process of realizing I had a full-length poetry manuscript. Since then, I’ve written a number of columns about how to go about preparing ...
