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May 16, 2020Readings...that feeling never goes away.
I always get that feeling right before reading my work in public. You may know it: the urge to simultaneously faint, throw up, and run out of the room. My first few readings were terrifying. I was fortunate ...
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October 29, 2019"When You Start Really Going with Writing, it Feels like Flying" Jess Taylor on the Freedom & Healing of Short Fiction
Jess Taylor's 2015 collection Pauls announced her as an innovative, creative, and fearless voice in Canadian short fiction. This fall she returns with a new book of stories, the memorably named Just ...
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September 26, 2019
Once I was a Maenad
When I was twenty-six a motley group of women and I took my first play to the Edmonton Fringe Festival. We called ourselves Maenad Theatre and we took two plays from Calgary to Edmonton, Tango Noir, a ...
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April 16, 2014
Puzzle
At the suggestion of a friend, I gave my students a Seamus Heaney poem, “A Personal Helicon,” cut up into a puzzle of words, running the gamut from eight “a’s” to one “you” and “your” ...
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November 13, 2019Home
This October I travelled to Calgary from my home in Kingston to do some book promotion and to catch up with my family and cherished friends. It had been a little over a year since I’d returned home, ...
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October 22, 2023Writing For Ghouls
It’s spooky season, and here in Atlantic Canada the ambiance is that of a flooded crypt. The smell of wet fallen leaves, rainy days that feel heavy and dark as night, smoke on the air indicating warmth ...
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August 11, 2020On Returning to Pen & Paper
The last time I wrote a story in a notebook must have been back in elementary school. I can remember handwriting in the thin cahiers we were given, double spacing my writing as instructed. Because I was ...
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November 28, 2016
The Art of the Novel: Interview with Daniel Marchildon
By Bianca Lakoseljac: OB Writer in Residence At Read Local in Midland, back in September, Daniel Marchildon, the winner of the Trillium Award for children’s literature, and I were among the local authors ...
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March 01, 2017The Lucky Seven, with Kathy Stinson
If you've ever needed a second chance to achieve your dreams, you won't want to miss Kids' Lit favourite Kathy Stinson's newest book. The Dance of the Violin (Annick Press), illustrated by Dušan Petričić, ...
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May 23, 2013
A Tale of Two Marys
Colm Tóibin recently spoke to Eleanor Wachtel on CBC’s “Writers and Company” about his new novel, The Testament of Mary. I tuned a close ear since I have for a while been meaning to write something ...