Search
-
August 11, 2020The lost art of rereading
There was a trail I used to walk when I was broken, decades ago, after I'd scooped my heart from my chest and passed it to a man, who'd winced, shrugged, and said, ummmm, no thanks.We’ve all been there.It ...
-
August 31, 2020The Nature of Truth in Art
For my final post as writer-in-residence, I’d like to devote a bit of space to one of the subjects I love to chew on: the nature of truth in art. (As a friend of mine recently noted: ‘You always go ...
-
November 28, 2017Tanya Talaga on the Title and Tragedy of Seven Fallen Feathers
The tragic story of 12-year-old Chanie Wenjack is a rightfully well known one now in Canada - how the young boy froze to death after running away from a residential school. What is less known is that ...
-
March 04, 2022Late Bloomers
I come from a family of late bloomers.Or at least, that’s the story I tell myself when I try to deal with the disappointment of not having been an outrageous success in my 20s and 30s, when I was precocious ...
-
April 13, 2023Read an Excerpt from Steven Heighton's Final Story Collection, Instructions for the Drowning
The CanLit community came together in mourning last year when the news broke that beloved and acclaimed Kingston-based writer Steven Heighton had passed away at the age of 60. Known for his powerful multi-genre ...
-
January 30, 2019My Reading Year: What I Learned from Reading 275 Books in 365 Days
The other day I told a friend that I'd read 275 books in 2018 and he responded by laughing and declaring emphatically, "That's a reading year!"I think that's an excellent way to describe my past year. ...
-
August 21, 2020Why Bother Writing?
A few nights ago, I woke up to the sound of a wolf howling into the bowl of the sky. We all know the sound, I’d heard versions of it my whole life, but I’d never actually heard one in the flesh like ...
-
December 17, 2024Acclaimed Artist David Gagnon Walker Guides the Audience Through Fear and Anxiety in an Immersive, Interactive Stage Play
It has been said that, if David Gagnon Walker's name appears on a theatre playbill, the audience should prepare themselves for the unexpected. The playwright has created some of the most interesting ...
-
April 12, 2018Mark Frutkin on Describing Characters and Writing a Literal Devil's Advocate
In Mark Frutkin's The Rising Tide (Porcupine's Quill), it's 1769 in Venice and things are getting pretty strange. From a man with a skeleton strapped to his back to a courtesan with odd stigmata marks, ...
-
July 28, 2017August writer-in-residence Naseem Hrab on a Cake that Became a Boy & Her First Picture Book
In Ira Crumb Makes a Pretty Good Friend (OwlKids), the debut picture book by Naseem Hrab (illustrated by Josh Holinaty), Ira is the new kid in town. When he realizes that could mean a lonely time at ...