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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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February 01, 2021
LOVE IN THE TIME OF COVID: The writing process Part 1 of 9
When I was first approached by Open Book about doing the author residency for the month of February, my first thought was that I would do a serialized short story and write a piece of fiction in the same ...
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February 08, 2022February is Excerpt Month: Get Your Fill of Free Reads, including Today's Spectacular Passage from Elise Levine's Say This
We love a free peek into a great book, and this month we want to share exactly that reading joy with you, our readers. Thanks to our publishing partners, we'll be presenting excerpts from some of this ...
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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 ...
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May 30, 2009
Canadian English and His Relatives
Back to our English. Having raised the question of how old he is, and mused about how we decide, we now consider his relatives. Perhaps we should begin with great-grandma.Our English, we know, is Canadian, ...
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February 08, 2021
LOVE IN THE TIME OF COVID: The writing process Part 3 of 9
As I stated before, the writing process for me is an intuitive one. Some people are afraid or intimidated by the blank page, but I see all kinds of possibilities in it. I am a visual writer, so I have ...
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October 26, 2020"Say what?"
“All the information you need can be given in dialogue.” — Elmore LeonardAnytime dialogue carries the story it’s pure joy. Sometimes it’s straight up, other times it’s slippery with manipulation. ...
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October 27, 2021The 2021 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize Finalists Each Share Their Favourite Part of the Writing Process
It's book prize season in Canada and for fiction lovers, one of the most exciting prizes has just gotten a fresh reboot. The Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize has gotten a new lease on its venerable ...
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October 08, 2016
Early Encounters with Poetry
A couple of interview questions recently posed to me got me thinking about my early encounters with poetry. For though my first book of poems has just been published a couple of decades after my first ...
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May 14, 2009
More Duppy Business?
Many years ago I read a book called HEALING THE FAMILY TREE by a psychiatrist, Dr. Kenneth McAll. I won’t go into the theories he presents in the book (it’s still available, for anyone who’s interested) ...
