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March 17, 2023Procrastination Station
It’s just shy of midnight and I’m sitting here, writing this, thinking about how I should have started it sooner. But if I had started it sooner, would it have been finished before now?If this question ...
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March 01, 2021
Writing violence (again)
On violence and trauma and repetition...When I was nineteen, I went to dinner at a friend’s, and afterwards, her father invited us all upstairs to see his attic art studio.There were so many canvasses ...
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April 15, 2017
Kathryn Mockler on Poetry Exercises
Today in my series on poetry prompts and exercises, I'm featuring writer Kathryn Mockler. She teaches creative writing, poetry, and screenwriting at Western University, and runs private workshops through ...
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October 11, 2021PECULIAR TIMES
Write at the edges of the day.― Toni MorrisonI was a thirty-four old woman with three children under the age of eight when I got the bright idea to write my first novel. I was also working outside the ...
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July 30, 2018
The Part of It You Don't See
If you’ve been reading my dispatches over the last month, you might have inferred that making a go of it as a writer is hard. Bending reality, memory, knowledge and experience into believable fiction, ...
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October 15, 2021MUSE ON THE LAM
Today’s post is about what to do when your muse goes AWOL. When your muse is a contrarian like mine is, getting them to show up for work often requires lengthy debates. Who has that extra time?The ...
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October 19, 2023Glimpse into the Wealth of Filipino-Canadian Writing Talent in this Excerpt from Magdaragat
Magdaragat: An Anthology of Filipino-Canadian Writing (Cormorant Books) opens with the line "Magdaragat is Filipino for 'seafarer' or 'mariner'". It's a first line that heralds the expansiveness of the ...
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February 22, 2023Anuja Varghese on Transformation, Literary Anxieties, and Writing for "Women Who Don’t See Themselves in Most Stories"
When it comes to genre, Anuja Varghese refuses to be penned in. Her debut story collection, Chrysalis (House of Anansi Press) is a highwire feat, balancing the surreal with the realist, the fantastical ...
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October 12, 2023"I Simply Wanted to Fly" Read an Excerpt from Moez Surani's The Legend of Baraffo
During times of revolution, there is one tension that consistently emerges: when change is necessary, should progressives work within an existing structure or seek to dismantle it and begin anew? This ...
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November 24, 2021"Maximum Curiosity and Maximum Respect" Susan Glickman's Collected Essays are a Hymn to Thoughtful Literary Criticism
For those who worry that thoughtful, long-form literary criticism is becoming a thing of the past, Susan Glickman's Artful Flight (forthcoming from the Porcupine's Quill; available for pre-order now) ...