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July 27, 2021
A Message of Hope: Silmy Abdullah's Debut Story Collection Spins Beautiful Tales of Migration, Family, & Self
When home is in flux, our sense of who we are can feel unanchored too. Enter writer and lawyer Silmy Abdullah's debut collection of short fiction, Home of the Floating Lily (Dundurn Press), which, ...
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October 08, 2021
Betsy Warland on Memoir as "the Mother Genre" & What She Loves about the Fluidity of Creative Nonfiction
It's been more than twenty years since Betsy Warland's Bloodroot: Tracing the Untelling of Motherloss (Inanna Publications) was first published, and the revolutionary, genre-bending memoir is still ...
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January 13, 2022
The Writers' Trust Amplified Voices Programme Offers Support & Promotion for BIPOC Authors Impacted by the Pandemic
Picture it: You've worked for years on a book, pouring your heart and soul into every sentence and idea, and you even managed to find a publisher. It's supposed to be a dream come true, and often involves ...
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March 18, 2022
Making the Leap: Why Writing Programs Matter Right Now
I’ve been on campus exactly once since March 2020, during the height of one of the province’s lockdowns, to pack up my old office at Humber College’s Lakeshore Campus. I was leaving my post as the ...
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March 21, 2022
"Canadian Stories in Conversation with the Wider World" Publisher Leigh Nash on Taking Up the Iconic Anansi Mantle
House of Anansi Press is, undoubtedly, a main character in the long and fascinating novel that is Canadian literature. Based in Toronto and founded in 1967 by Dennis Lee and Dave Godfrey during a time ...
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May 01, 2022
The Writer (You Think) I am
The year before trying out for the Simon Fraser University basketball team, I trained in ways and at an intensity I never before had. I wanted to make that team so badly, so desirous was I to prove myself, ...
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May 10, 2022
Genres You Didn’t Learn About in Kidlit 101
One of the most formative experiences in my development as a writer was working in a bookstore. For four glorious years I was the manager of the award-winning, much beloved Flying Dragon Bookshop in Toronto. ...
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June 30, 2023
Adapting an Adult Book Into a Book for Young Readers
I know that young people are reading my 2019 book, because they’ve written me e-mails and messaged me on various social media platforms to tell me where they got it (thank you, libraries) and who they’re ...
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October 11, 2023
Vulnerability 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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November 20, 2023
Things I Learned from Working in Publishing (That I Wish I Knew Earlier)
I spent 12 years in children’s publishing and here is a selection of things I learned on the job that I wish I had known beforehand. You don’t need an illustrator to submit your picture book manuscriptIn ...