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February 22, 2016
Read Around The World: Part Two of The Extravagant JT Reading Program That Will Never Be Started or Finished
In my last post, I discussed why I think we all (or at least me in particular) live, read, and write: to develop mutual understanding with other people. I’m someone who has often felt alienated, and ...
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September 17, 2020To Pandemic or not to Pandemic
Surely any period of upheaval and uncertainty is a difficult one to start a novel. And here we are, seven months into the pandemic and with no end in sight. Let’s say that you’re a novelist ...
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October 02, 2022
Let's Get Started
Hello Open Book ‘ers, My name is Lorrie and it’s my privilege to be the Writer in Residence for the month of October. I’m honoured and truly humbled. I’ll pass on a big introduction as it’s ...
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October 24, 2022
Rusted Development
For decades I’ve been cruising antique haunts and farm fields, stopping at those laden with dormant pieces of rusted equipment - harrows, cultivators, thrashers, sickle bars among them. I’m drawn ...
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October 27, 2022
On Being Creative
It’s my belief we are all born creatives. As soon as I remember being a child, I felt strong stirrings of creativity. It was constant. I was always colouring and drawing, exploring the many uses of ...
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October 31, 2022
Beverly's Blessing
Meegwetch, maarsii, thank you for being a part of my circle for the month of October and for welcoming me into the Open Book circle. After my initial nervousness at clicking the ‘Send for publishing’ button, ...
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March 17, 2016A Note on the Imagination
To thrive off the imagination, even if it affords only a dull light at the end of the day, is worth it; or not to thrive, even, but to loosely depend upon, keep the fires of imagining alive, in order ...
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April 12, 2022Read an Excerpt from Caroline van Rooyen's Any Girl, About a Teen Survivor Hunting Down a Predator
Content warning: sexual violenceCaroline van Rooyen's Any Girl (Mawenzi House) is the harrowing, fiery story of July, the unlikely 15-year old heroine who wages war on a rapist terrorizing her community ...
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July 25, 2023Read an Excerpt from Denise Da Costa's And the Walls Came Down, an Absorbing Portrait of East Toronto in the 90s
A diary can be a powerful portal. In Denise Da Costa's And The Walls Came Down (Dundurn Press), Delia Ellis returns to her childhood home in east Toronto, years after making her ways through the trials ...
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April 26, 2023Read an Excerpt from Rocco de Giacomo's Casting Out, a Poetic Memoir of Leaving Evangelical Life
Rocco de Giacomo's childhood was filled with TV faith healers, tense and frequent predictions of the rapture, and the dramatic and sometimes problematic practices of the extreme Pentecostal religious ...
