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October 20, 2022Gary Barwin on Form, Social Media, and the "Epistemological Hijinks of Poems"
Known for his humour, creativity, and general up-ending of the peskily staid CanLit stereotype, poet and fiction writer Gary Barwin shows no signs of slowing down with 26 books to his name. His newest, ...
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July 21, 2015
Talking in Public About Writing a Novel
I’m putting the finishing touches onto a talk about my novel, Eulogy, which I’ll present tomorrow as part of the weekly Artist Talk series at Haliburton School of The Arts. This is to be a one hour ...
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September 28, 2023On Motivation
I’m a person who gets called “very prolific” a lot. I won’t get into what I think about that or whether I agree or if I think it’s even remotely good for my mental health or personal relationships. ...
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March 02, 2023Safe Spaces Within The Margins
*Content Warning: brief mention of sexual assault, addiction and self harm*Nearly six months after I became the victim of a violent sexual assault in September 2017, I sat on the back porch of our rental ...
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May 26, 2020How to Keep Making Children’s Books Right Now, Or Not
As this new normal becomes, well, more normal, those of us able to self-isolate may start to find a bit of space in-between all of our feelings and obligations to build new writing routines, drawing routines ...
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May 29, 2018What I Wish Every Aspiring Children’s Author Knew About Publishing
It seems like book publishing is a mysterious, captivating industry to many people. It barely gets represented in pop culture and when it does get featured (Elf and Fatal Attraction come to mind), ...
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September 12, 2023The Infinite Library
A few years ago I led a writing workshop and introduced a prompt I called “The Infinite Library.” I had students imagine they had entered a library containing every possible unwritten novel, and could ...
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May 10, 2021Going Beyond the Booklists
“Unprecedented” seems to be one of the keywords people often use to describe the past 14 months, and while that may continue to be true, I have also personally found another word that equally resonated ...
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September 10, 2018On Kindness, and Generosity
The Toronto literary community has recently lost two very bright lights, mourning the deaths of Priscila Uppal and Ann Ireland.Though I didn’t know either Ann or Priscila all that well, I feel fortunate ...
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September 16, 2018Schmoozing for Introverts
It’s that time of year again, when students return to school, the leaves change colour, and Fall Book Season begins.The brilliant Sarah Selecky has already written this excellent antidote to those icky ...
