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October 27, 2018
Characters like family
One of my favourite parts of the writing process is creating and developing characters. I’ve always believed a story is only as strongly crafted as the people in it. Characters are the pillars of and ...
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January 22, 2021
Claiming Space for Indigenous Languages in English Literature
English is the language of the colonizer. It came with the arrival of settlers to what many people call Turtle Island, or North America. It is a relatively new language to this land, and has only been ...
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March 29, 2021
Speaking Your Story into Existence
Over the winter I was part of two separate online writing residencies through the Banff Centre. Each cohort involved wonderfully talented writers from across the land, sharing their stories, truths, and ...
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June 28, 2021
Necessary Residential School Reading
As more and more mass graves at former residential school sites are brought to light, many Canadians are finally realizing the extent of genocide in this country, while many Indigenous people are reliving ...
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August 03, 2021
In Praise of Editors
I believe the most important relationship in publishing is between the author and the editor. It’s a fundamental partnership that turns ideas into prose and drafts into polished works. When the editing ...
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June 06, 2017
Hockey Stalking
I’m a big advocate of writers carrying notebooks. You can jot down thoughts, overheard conversations—I’m a terrible eavesdropper—sights you want to call up later.Yesterday, a father was trying ...
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September 15, 2014
On the Idea of a Secret—a Conversation with Rhonda Douglas
Part 2: Q&A with Rhonda DouglasSandra Ridley: How do you integrate the direct and personal ‘I’ into your poetry? Or does the ‘I’ tend to be an ‘other’?Rhonda Douglas: I have used “I” ...
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February 26, 2021
Grinding Out a New Novel
Writing a novel is a grind. It’s an arduous, meticulous, and often repetitive process that can take years. There’s the actual typing of words onto the page, and then come the edits and rewrites, which ...
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April 16, 2014
Puzzle
At the suggestion of a friend, I gave my students a Seamus Heaney poem, “A Personal Helicon,” cut up into a puzzle of words, running the gamut from eight “a’s” to one “you” and “your” ...
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April 10, 2014
Perfection
I’ve been running a writing workshop all winter and, once again, marveling at the courage that it takes to tackle the tricks and complexities of the English language. The writers are exposing themselves ...