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September 06, 2018Anatomy of a Short Story, or Where I Get (Some of) My Ideas
I’m not one of those writers who makes everything up completely from scratch. And seriously, do those writers even exist? (If they do, I am jealous of them.)In my fiction, almost everything comes from ...
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March 19, 2019Writer 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 ...
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March 25, 2019How to Secure a Literary Agent
With spring just around the corner (we hope), there’s a renewed sense of optimism in the air. Writers are slowly emerging from the depths of their hobbit holes, and some have manuscripts ready to be ...
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February 07, 2020Book Therapy: The Wisdom of Children(’s Books)
“I’ll be okay…I’ll be okay…”—Akiko Miyakoshi, The Piano RecitalIt’s probably not surprising that, after eighteen months of extended maternity leave, I’ve found the return to full time ...
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November 24, 2010Inside the University of Guelph Creative Writing MFA at Guelph-Humber, with Catherine Bush
Catherine Bush, novelist and associate program coordinator of the University of Guelph Creative Writing MFA at Guelph-Humber, talks to Open Book about their unique writing program, the award-winning mentoring ...
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June 04, 2017Finding Your Material -- and This Time, Billie Holiday
The question is, how does a writer recognize what is uniquely her material? Save herself from wrong turns, dead ends, dead writing?The subject has always been central to me—an obsession—and years ...
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June 19, 2020
To Pre-read, or Not to Pre-read?
Should you be vetting your kids’ reading material? For many, the answer seems so obvious, you don’t even need to ask the question. To make sure kids are choosing books that meet their approval, ...
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January 15, 2018On Margaret Atwood and the new Canlit
It’s nine o’clock on a Sunday night and my son is asleep. This is a time reserved for me, a time when I usually don’t work or think about work, when I sometimes watch Stephen Colbert videos, or ...
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!["All the Good Stuff [is] Inevitable" Ray Robertson on First Sentences, Epigraphs, & Bookstore Love](/var/site/storage/images/news/all-the-good-stuff-is-inevitable-ray-robertson-on-first-sentences-epigraphs-bookstore-love/105065-1-eng-CA/All-the-Good-Stuff-is-Inevitable-Ray-Robertson-on-First-Sentences-Epigraphs-Bookstore-Love_blog_post_wide.jpg "\"All the Good Stuff [is] Inevitable\" Ray Robertson on First Sentences, Epigraphs, & Bookstore Love")
!["All the Good Stuff [is] Inevitable" Ray Robertson on First Sentences, Epigraphs, & Bookstore Love](/var/site/storage/images/news/all-the-good-stuff-is-inevitable-ray-robertson-on-first-sentences-epigraphs-bookstore-love/105065-1-eng-CA/All-the-Good-Stuff-is-Inevitable-Ray-Robertson-on-First-Sentences-Epigraphs-Bookstore-Love_blog_post.jpg "\"All the Good Stuff [is] Inevitable\" Ray Robertson on First Sentences, Epigraphs, & Bookstore Love")
August 04, 2022"All the Good Stuff [is] Inevitable" Ray Robertson on First Sentences, Epigraphs, & Bookstore Love
There have been a lot of unexpected casualties of the pandemic. For Phil Cooper, the protagonist of acclaimed writer Ray Robertson's newest novel Estates Large and Small (Biblioasis), who has battled ...
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April 26, 2023Book Therapy: The Remembering Stone
“But Alice didn’t want the perfect stone to sink to the bottom like all the others, so she put it in her pocket.”-Carey Sookocheff, The Remembering StoneFor my family, last year was defined by loss. ...
