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October 11, 2023Vulnerability is a Writing Tool
My most reflexive apology is, “I went to theatre school.” Usually delivered with a shrug or a knowing smirk as if to say I can’t help it, it gets a laugh from the creative set about 82 percent of ...
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October 26, 2020You, Too, Can Be a Mediocre YouTube Star
A few fun facts about me: When I was about five-years-old, I starred as Dopey in a production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at camp and killed it. Everyone was laughing. I also studied improv for ...
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October 18, 2016
Poetic Inspiration II
This is the second in a series of posts highlighting poems that have made my synapses crackle, broadened my sense of what poems can be and do, and sparked me to stretch further in my own work. The first ...
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October 23, 2016
Poetic Inspiration III
This is the third in a series of posts highlighting inventive poems that have broadened my sense of what poems can be and do, and sparked me to stretch further in my own work. (The previous instalments ...
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June 28, 2023The Benefits of Being an Imposter
Like most writers, I’ve had a lot of rent jobs. When I was lucky, I worked in my chosen fields of editing and education. When I wasn’t so lucky, I worked in an institutional kitchen, as an ad mail ...
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October 30, 2019"There's a Story Behind My Mom's Death That I Felt Had to Be Told" K.B. Thors on Digging Deep with Her New Memoir-In-Verse
In her new memoir-in-verse, Vulgar Mechanics (Coach House Books), poet K.B. Thors takes the reader on a dark, redemptive journey from heartbreaking loss to spiritual rebirth. Themes of grief, sex, and ...
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November 05, 2018Kim Trainor on Capturing Both a Tattooed Iron Age Woman & Modern Day Trauma in Her Book Length Poem
In 1993, a Russian scientist discovered the mummified remains of an Iron Age Pazyryk woman. She was covered in tattoos and buried with great ceremony. During the complex and difficult excavation, the ...
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March 11, 2019Writing and illustrating children’s books: All the surprises
The process of writing, illustrating and publishing a children’s book can be filled with surprises—good and bad! For example, I’m always surprised by how much my heart explodes when a friend sends ...
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June 26, 2018Read an Excerpt from David Goudreault's Raw, Powerful, Darkly Funny Mama's Boy
Content warning: suicide, self-harmIn its original French edition, Mama's Boy (Book*hug) by David Goudreault (translated by JC Sutcliffe) was a smash hit - a bestseller, winner of the 2016 Grand Prix ...
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October 26, 2016
Favourite Literary Podcasts
I spent much of the day preparing to record a podcast, the third episode of On the Line: Conversations About Poetry (http://www.therustytoque.com/on-the-line). It’s a podcast designed to operate like ...