Search
-
November 16, 2020
Things I Love About Readings: In-Person vs. Virtual
In-Person ReadingsPutting on my lipstick (burgundy), earrings (fake gold), and favourite clothes (burgundy again).Listening to music on public transit on the way over.Seeing familiar faces and hearing ...
-
January 06, 2021"The History is Present in Each Moment" Nathan Niigan Noodin Adler on His Spectacular New Short Fiction Collection, Ghost Lake
Nathan Niigan Noodin Adler's 2016 novel Wrist was a taut, smart Indigenous monster story that launched Adler as a talented new literary voice. Readers are in for a treat with his follow up, Ghost ...
-
February 07, 2015
Re: (Whether It Is) Becoming (To Be) a Lady and the Use of the Word in Jamaican Creole (Jc)
News flash! Author copies of my novel, Red Jacket, arrived in the mail yesterday. https://www.dundurn.com/books/... About to post this exploration of the use of the word ‘lady’ in the land of my birth ...
-
May 14, 2009
Should Professors of Poetry at Oxford Be Without Sin?
A friend of mine, a Jamaican man, told me many years ago that he disliked going to bars in England, where he’d been a student. Why? Because if a man put his hand up under a woman’s skirt, he was likely ...
-
November 23, 2020
Comparing Myself with May from My Day With Gong Gong
Writing May, the main character in my kids book My Day With Gong Gong, was a joy! It was my first time writing from the perspective of a kid as an adult, and for kids as a main audience. A lot of her ...
-
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 ...
-
April 01, 2020Keep It Short: Frances Boyle on Rewrites, Taking Chances, and the Authors That Inspired Her
A haunted mother is terrorized by spectral visions of twins. A young academic reminisces on the past, and a long-lost film, as she watches her apartment building burn. A carefree woman tears through Toronto ...
-
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 ...
-
October 01, 2018
Binaakwe Giizis - Moon of Falling Leaves
Happy October! In Anishinaabemowin (the Ojibwe language), October is commonly known in many places as "Binaakwe Giizis", or the Moon of Falling Leaves. Anishinaabemowin is a very poetic and descriptive ...
-
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 ...
