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December 14, 2016Madeleine Thien on Language, Music, and Asking the Unaskable
2016 has been Madeleine Thien's year. It's not often that the world of writing and publishing can agree so enthusiastically on a writer's achievements, but Thien's breathtaking Do Not Say We Have Nothing (Knopf ...
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September 14, 2020Short is Beautiful
Don’t get me wrong, I like to lose myself in a big, fat novel. My first and still-favourite author is Charles Dickens. Not long ago I managed to get through Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch and a couple ...
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February 19, 2021
LOVE IN THE TIME OF COVID: The writing process Part 6 of 9
I am a true romantic, one that loves love and I particularly enjoy writing about love. From the onset of the story, I knew that it was some sort of romance, but I didn’t know if the outcome would be ...
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October 21, 2020The casting call
“Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head and … as you get older, you become more skillful in casting them.” — Gore VidalThe characters who show up in my stories are truly a mixed ...
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June 25, 2019"A Title Will Often Jumpstart the Development Process of a Piece" Playwright Kat Sandler on Her Play BANG BANG, Titles, & More
Kat Sandler's newest play BANG BANG (Playwrights Canada Press), features not only a play within a play but a movie within in a play as well. When a playwright writes the story of a Black female cop ...
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February 28, 2021
LOVE IN THE TIME OF COVID: The writing process Part 9 of 9
One thing about the pandemic is that it has changed how we socialize and interact with other humans. Even before the pandemic people seemed to be becoming more engaged online and less actually connected. ...
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January 10, 2019CBC Canada Reads Announces Eclectic Longlist for Canada's Most Moving Book
CBC Books has announced the Canada Reads longlist and the 2019 competition's theme: "One book to move you".The 15-title list includes fiction and nonfiction, new titles and older ones, from authors across ...
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April 29, 2014
Questions Not to Ask While Facing a Blank Page
Is enjambment supposed to be pronounced with a French accent?What do you do when you unpack a line and can’t figure out where you thought you were going in the first place?Is a metaphor just a simile ...
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September 24, 2020Literary Ancestors
It’s said that every person has two families. There’s the one that you are born into and the one that you choose for yourself—your friends. But writers have a third family, the literary ancestors ...
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February 12, 2021
LOVE IN THE TIME OF COVID: The writing process Part 4 of 9
The creation of tension and suspense and mood shifts to me are just as important as creating characters and the plot themselves. Tension and suspense is what makes the story come alive. For the short ...