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November 26, 2020Children’s Book Gift Guide for Little (and Big) Bookworms
I love buying children’s books for my niece and nephew. They all have such different personalities and interests and it’s so fun for me to find books I think they’ll enjoy. And I also love buying ...
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June 07, 2015
Chopsticks
Last summer, I made chilled noodle soup.Why? I was writing a short story that took place in North Korea, and I was stuck. The plot, for some reason, had twisted into a Gordian knot (if you know what I’m ...
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January 30, 2024Christina Cooke Explores the Power of Family and Home in Broughtupsy
Through the complicated happenings of our lives, people are often faced with challenges that make them consider how far they are willing to go for family, and to preserve a sense of home. In Christina ...
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July 19, 2017Christine McNair on How Life Events Impact Writing & the Seismic Effect of Great Books
Christine McNair's first collection of poetry, Conflict, landed with a big splash: it was a finalist for the City of Ottawa Book Award, the Archibald Lampman Award, and the ReLit Award, and was shortlisted ...
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January 22, 2021Claiming Space for Indigenous Languages in English Literature
English is the language of the colonizer. It came with the arrival of settlers to what many people call Turtle Island, or North America. It is a relatively new language to this land, and has only been ...
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May 01, 2023Class, History, Fiction, and Form Part 1
It’s Monday, May 1st. If you’re reading this in Canada or the United States, you are most likely working today. I know I am. At this very moment I am probably guiding a group of adult learners through ...
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May 03, 2023
Class, History, Fiction, and Form Part 2: Is the Bicycle Dead?
Before I do anything else, I have to try to say what I mean by fictional forms. I do so with a lot of trepidation, because my sense of these things is idiosyncratic and perhaps wrong. But here goes.People ...
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May 08, 2023Class, History, Fiction, and Form Part 3: "To See Someone Who Does Not See"
So now I have to do what I said I would do and start offering some ways of escaping the individualist narrative conventions of the bourgeois novel. They will by no means be the only ways. Not by a longshot. ...
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May 10, 2023
Class, History, Fiction, and Form Part 4: I Scream of Benigni
I feel a mounting sense of anxiety that I still haven’t said everything I said I would. I have called my shot and then proceeded to chuck basketballs, tennis balls, darts, arrows, and various other ...
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May 12, 2023
Class, History, Fiction, and Form Part 5: The Speak o the Mearns
My parents are renters, so we moved houses a lot growing up. How can you expect continuity under those conditions, the steady passage of an uncomplicatedly teleological time? We can’t point to the place ...