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June 24, 2015
Why I Read Obituaries
To get out of a dry writing spell several years ago, I had to take drastic measures. To take drastic measures meant calling my writer friend. In Ontario.She was shocked but not surprised when I called ...
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June 25, 2015
Stuff Happens
The other day I picked my almost-7-year-old daughter from school. I asked her, with my usual level of enthusiasm, “How was your day?” “Good,” she said, with her usual lack thereof. “What did ...
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June 22, 2017Flaneuse-ing
Walking out yesterday afternoon, being a flaneuse on the Danforth. A flanny on the Danny.At Pape, a pigeon flies down from a store awning into the path of people heading for the subway. Turning, it flies ...
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June 01, 2017How to Find Your Material -- and Mike Babcock
So there I was last Friday, landing in Phoenix with my hockey team, heading for a recreational hockey tournament. Ice hockey, I should specify, since we’re talking Phoenix, temperature 34 degrees C ...
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May 05, 2022
Nothing to do: Boredom and the Death of Imagination
“The World,” Wordsworth wrote, “is too much with us.” That was in the early nineteenth century, before television, before ubiquitous billboards along roadways, before social media. These days, ...
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April 03, 2025How to Avoid Blank Page Syndrome: The Jar Method
When I’m editing, there are specific problems to tackle, and I find I have a clear to-do list. Even if there’s a lot to do, I have a road map, but at the beginning of a project, I get so easily daunted ...
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July 11, 2017Debut novelist Kimberley Tait on Gretzky, Michael Jackson & Virgin Ears
London (the one across the pond) based author Kimberley Tait had an unusual path to publishing. After moving from her native Toronto to the U.S., she earned an MBA from Columbia University and began ...
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September 29, 2017Chatting With Editors Who Make It Happen - Part One
Welcome to autumn and the return of my Kid Can lit blog! Because to me, September is a time to look forward to new beginnings, especially new writing projects, I decided to chat with some of the amazing ...
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November 29, 2017So You Want to Write About Race
Somehow I have become on expert on writing race.This was not something I planned for. When I started publishing, I was writing fiction about Chinese Canadian characters, about families who had been invisible ...
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January 18, 2016The Lucky Seven Interview, with Paul Yee
Governor General's Literary Award winner Paul Yee is shaking things up, switching to writing fiction for adults after publishing nearly thirty books for young readers and adult non-fiction. A Superior ...
