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July 05, 2018Scarborough: A Setting
When I was growing up in Scarborough, I loved it and hated it. I don’t think it’s an uncommon feeling towards places where we grew up. But there are things about coming of age in a suburb as a racialized ...
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July 03, 2018"What's Your Story?" Read the Winning Texts of the 2018 OBPO Writing Contest Winners! Part Three: Scarborough
It's summer and that means the best time to read - whether it's inside with a fan or out in a park or on a beach. So grab your refreshment of choice and find some shade to take in four brand new, exclusive, ...
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October 29, 2016
L.M. Montgomery, Ontario, and Poetry
Today I gave a reading from How to Draw a Rhinoceros from the pulpit of the Historic Leaskdale Church, a somewhat unlikely location for my first public reading from this book. The occasion was LMM Day, ...
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September 24, 2019The Art of the Deadline
Every word I’m typing right now is late. Not a month late, or even a week late, but three days late. And with every tap, tap, tap on my keyboard, I feel a pang. Anxiety. Guilt. Racing thoughts. Why ...
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September 27, 2018Coming to Voice
I worked on this piece while at a residency for BIPOC writers in the fall of 2017. I did not pick it up again when I returned. While workshopping it there, I was not convinced it captured what I was trying ...
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May 25, 2009
Things to Do This Summer in Toronto, for Free
In these difficult times when every penny must count, and money for entertainment, as for everything else, needs to be wisely spent, it’s reassuring to know that there are lots of things to do in Toronto ...
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March 17, 2020Read an Excerpt From the Inspiring Collection 'Releasing Hope'
The transition from incarceration to the free world is incredibly daunting. Challenges such as finding work, a place to live, and a supportive community in which to heal can be extremely difficult and ...
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September 13, 2024A Young Girl Looks to Family Stories and a Very Powerful Poem to Find her Place in I, Too, Am Here
A true sense of belonging may be taken for granted by some, but there are many who do not find it as easily. Whether due to social and cultural issues that marginalize immigrants and people of colour, ...
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March 09, 2023Artist & Poet Amy Ching-Yan Lam on Stories, Healing, and a Cheese-Based Universe
Stories are more than simply tales we tell ourselves and each other. They are lessons, conversations, cultural landscapes both collective and deeply personal – and in celebrated multi-discipline artist Amy ...
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September 14, 2021Read an Excerpt from The Shaytan Bride, Sumaiya Matin's Powerful True Story of Escaping Forced Marriage
As a small child, Sumaiya Matin had heard about the Shaytan Bride. A woman with something wrong with her. Maybe she was crazy, or defiant. Or maybe she was possessed, trapped or seduced by an evil spirit ...
