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Writer at Work: Where I’m Writing From (On Dionne Brand, Black Earth Rising, and Writing with “Love”)

Books that change us challenge us and console us. They break our hearts, they make us think, but most of all, they make us see people as people. Aside from being a generalized and sentimental statement ...

Neuroscience and Literature – an Interview with Dr. Marissa Maheu in Which I Don’t Know What I’m Talking About

Okay first, I want to say that I try. I do! I will freely admit that I have no idea what I’m talking about here, so this post is a half-formed thing (ha!) in which I’m trying to figure stuff out.In ...

"I’m Coming in as a Book Lover": CBC Canada Reads Panelists on their Upcoming Literary Battle

CBC Canada Reads is unlike any other book prize in the country - rather than a jury selecting a book in private, the process is not just out in the open but televised, with panelists going to the mat ...

CBC Canada Reads Halfway Point: A Heated Debate Sees M.G. Vassanji's Nostalgia Voted Off

Two of the four days of the 2017 CBC Canada Reads competition have passed, with a surprise tie-breaker on the first day knocking out The Break by Katherena Vermette (House of Anansi), which had been ...

Lisa de Nikolits Honours Beloved Late Editor Luciana Ricciutelli with a Dedication in Her Wild New Speculative Novel

Lisa de Nikolits' wild romp of a novel, The Rage Room, was described upon its publication in 2020 as "Groundhog Day meets The Matrix" filtered through the author's trademark madcap creative, feminist ...

Bringing It All Back Home

As I write this, I am sitting outside in the backyard of a rowhouse in Toronto’s East End. The wind is stirring the leaves of a big maple tree spreading its branches high above me, and stirring the ...

Shab-e She'r (Poetry Night) XCV

The Entitled Interview, with Moez Surani

Moez Surani's ةيلمع Operación Opération Operation 行 动 Oперация (BookThug) is a book-length poetic examination of the violent evolution of language used in naming military operations, ...

Creative Life

I was asked to give a keynote address at the launch of the student literary journal, Scarborough Fair at the University of Toronto Scarborough. The theme was “The Creative Life”. As their Writer in ...

Scarborough: 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 ...