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November 24, 2015On Writing Violence - An Addendum
I’ve been receiving a lot of positive feedback and some questions about one of my first posts for Open Book, “On Writing Violence.” One reader, Susan, asked me in the comments about how this all ...
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September 12, 2019Marie-Louise Gay's Celebration of Young Readers' Imaginations in Fern and Horn: "You Have Your Unique Wonderful Way of Seeing the World"
In Fern and Horn (Groundwood Books), the titular twins Fern and Horn might be small, but their imaginations are huge. Fern loves drawing and helps Horn unlock his love of drawing too - the only trouble ...
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February 19, 2021
LOVE IN THE TIME OF COVID: The writing process Part 6 of 9
I am a true romantic, one that loves love and I particularly enjoy writing about love. From the onset of the story, I knew that it was some sort of romance, but I didn’t know if the outcome would be ...
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May 05, 2020Writers As Readers: May 2020 Writer-in-Residence Derek Mascarenhas on His Favourite Books
Told through seventeen linked short stories, Toronto author Derek Mascarenhas' debut Coconut Dreams (Book*hug) traces the lives of a South Asian family through a series of shifting voices and timelines, ...
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February 02, 2021Why We Need to Question “Hobbies” in the Pandemic
On a rainy Thursday morning at the end of January 2021, I lay in bed staring at the ceiling for far too long... I couldn’t remember what I had done in 2020. I remember the past couple of years clearly: ...
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June 09, 2016A Poet, a Novelist and a Toddler Enter a Room
Do you ever wonder what it’s like to be one of those literary power couples, talent just oozing from their pores, words pouring from their pens, seemingly effortlessly? Meaghan Strimas & Nathan ...
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March 24, 2020Dirty Dozen: Jane Munro Talks Teenage Jobs, Her First Poem, and the Joys of the Upside-Down
Griffin Prize-winning poet Jane Munro's newest collection, Glass Float (Brick Books), is a study of boundaries and connections. The limit of the horizon, of a land-bound glass float, is used to illustrate ...
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November 02, 2015Hello, Open Book Readers. I'm Happy to Be Here...
Hello readers. As you might have gathered, I am the incoming Writer-in-Residence for Open Book Toronto, and will be with you through the entire month of November. I’m happy to be here for the month, ...
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May 18, 2022"There’s What You See and What You Don’t" Read an Excerpt from Didier Leclair's Trillium-Winning Novel, Toronto, I Love You
In Toronto, I Love You by Didier Leclair (Mawenzi House, translated by Elaine Kennedy) Raymond Dossougbé thinks, at first, that he's found a sanctuary in Toronto.After fleeing corruption and violence ...
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November 20, 2015Taking Your Medicine in the Editing Room
In previous posts I’ve talked about the hard road to getting a book published, and even a bit about the effort that goes into just getting those first few stories done. I’ve talked about submitting ...