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October 29, 2023Reading the Veil
When it’s going well, writing feels like magic. You sit in front of a blank page, and against all expectation, open a portal to new people, scenarios, settings, and ideas. Through some synthesis of ...
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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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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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August 16, 2022"What it Means to Be a Palestinian in Diaspora" Saeed Teebi on His Vivid & Wise Short Fiction Debut
Writer and lawyer Saeed Teebi's short story, "Her First Palestinian", an evocative, uncomfortable, brilliant gem of a character study, was shortlisted for the prestigious CBC Short Story Prize in 2021. ...
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December 10, 2020Bee Whisperer Jenna Butler Talks from Her Off the Grid Alberta Farm about Climate, Storytelling, & Healing
In recent years, we've learned to look to the bees as a metric of our world's failing health, and the results haven't been heartening. But there are those who are doing the work to support these essential ...
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January 06, 2022"Ubuntu Has Gone From a Reminder to an Urgency" Chidiogo Akunyili-Parr on Inhabiting Her Revolutionary Mother's Voice & Philosophy
Dr. Dora Akunyili was a Nigerian pharmacologist who spent her life crusading against a scourge of counterfeit drugs in her country—drugs that were responsible for the deaths of millions, including Akunyili's ...
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November 20, 2024Chris MacDonald Chronicles Two Friends' Revelatory Adventure Across the UK with a Truly Special 90's Punk Band
On a backpacking trip through the UK in 1999, Chris MacDonald and his friend Jason found themselves roughing it from country to country. They slept where they could, and were witness to a number of ...
