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July 03, 2019What We Owe To One Another
In the immediate few weeks and months after the Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD) takes place in Brampton each May, I’m always struck by a strange feeling, something that’s equal parts euphoria, ...
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November 20, 2023Getting to Know Marion Agnew, Author of the Witty & Poignant New Novel Making Up the Gods
Simone, a widow, lives a quiet life in her cottage by a lake – until one day, when a man named Martin shows up on her doorstep, claiming to be a cousin. He is potentially Simone's only living relative, ...
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January 19, 2021Trina Davies' Brilliant New Play, Silence, Brings an Overlooked Figure in History to Centre Stage
It would be hard to find anyone who doesn't know who Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, was. But Mabel Hubbard Bell isn't a name that pops up in many history classes. The untold story ...
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January 26, 2022CBC Books Announces The 2022 Canada Reads Panellists & Books, Including Two Giller Winning Novels
This March, one Canadian writer will add the coveted CBC Canada Reads crown to their honours, and it looks like this year, a major literary honour won't be an unfamiliar experience for the eventual winner. ...
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May 18, 2016Kid Lit Can, with Susan Hughes: The Magic, The Wonder - Chatting with YA Fantasy Authors (Part 2)
Today, I continue my conversation about writing fantasy with these four amazingly talented and experienced YA authors: Lena Coakley, Alyxander Harvey, Nicole Luiken, and Arthur Slade. Please feel free ...
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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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December 12, 2018Beyond the Possible: On World Building
Sometimes, I think about what would have happened to Frodo and Sam if, during their journey across the land to Mordor, Frodo had fallen down a jagged slope of rocks and broken his leg.Would Frodo, delirious ...
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March 13, 2017My final two columns: Part One
After nearly a decade, my time as a columnist for Open Book comes to a close. According to my email folder, it was May 2009 when Amy Logan Holmes first approached me with the idea of submitting pieces ...
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September 20, 2024Farzana Doctor's New YA Novel is About Surviving Hardship, the Power of Friendship, and Growing Up
Acclaimed author and psychotherapist Farzana Doctor has explored the human condition in-depth through her adult fiction and non-fiction, and now her latest novel is a richly woven work for young adult ...
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October 24, 2013Writing Fatherhood
What do we know about pregnancy1.I shall begin, by speaking. Incubate, introduce a glossary. Just on the tongue. Unpaginated.2.Something is growing, inside. Occupant. Connects whole milk to healthy industry. ...
