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November 05, 2018Kim Trainor on Capturing Both a Tattooed Iron Age Woman & Modern Day Trauma in Her Book Length Poem
In 1993, a Russian scientist discovered the mummified remains of an Iron Age Pazyryk woman. She was covered in tattoos and buried with great ceremony. During the complex and difficult excavation, the ...
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April 05, 2023Vera Constantineau on the Haibun Form & Finding Poetry in Buddhism's 108 Defilements
While Catholicism has its seven deadly sins, Buddhism gets a lot more specific, with a whopping 108 temptations that practitioners seek to avoid. Alternatively translated as impurities, vexations, or ...
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September 28, 2023Excerpt: Laurence Beaudoin-Masse Skewers Influencer & Wellness Culture in Her Brilliant YA Sequel
Laurence Beaudoin-Masse's debut novel, Suck it In and Smile was published to wide acclaim in 2022. Exploring our social media-influenced obsession with perfection and appearance, the young adult novel ...
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September 10, 2018On Kindness, and Generosity
The Toronto literary community has recently lost two very bright lights, mourning the deaths of Priscila Uppal and Ann Ireland.Though I didn’t know either Ann or Priscila all that well, I feel fortunate ...
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January 14, 2021Achievable, Artistic Resolutions for Authors and Illustrators
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I love coming up with new year’s resolutions. I love committing to some kind of regular creative activity … no matter the outcome! Last year, I said ...
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June 30, 2023Adapting an Adult Book Into a Book for Young Readers
I know that young people are reading my 2019 book, because they’ve written me e-mails and messaged me on various social media platforms to tell me where they got it (thank you, libraries) and who they’re ...
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May 29, 2018What I Wish Every Aspiring Children’s Author Knew About Publishing
It seems like book publishing is a mysterious, captivating industry to many people. It barely gets represented in pop culture and when it does get featured (Elf and Fatal Attraction come to mind), ...
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November 27, 2020
Some Ways To Deal With Writer's Block
I used to think that writer’s block just meant not having any inspiration or ideas. If only it was just that! Now I know it’s many things - and for me, it’s mostly anxiety caused by both lack of ...
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August 31, 2016The Lower Reaches of Pulp
It’s rare for me to be disturbed by a book: usually, I enjoy being scared or pushed to an extreme emotion within the safety of a page. But I was badly bothered by a pulp novel from the 1980s that I ...
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June 25, 2019A Few Key Things Every Newly Published Children’s Book Authors and Illustrators Should Know!
The title says it all, guys! Here’s a roundup of a bunch of things that newly published authors and illustrators should know. Whether it’s resources on negotiating contracts or where to do research ...
