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February 28, 2019Poetry School: Dana Gioia on the matter of poetry
Twenty-eight years ago US poet Dana Gioia’s essay “Can Poetry Matter?” was published in the Atlantic, sparking “a firestorm of debate and discussion” over the role of the poet in contemporary ...
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August 18, 2020(Cook)Book Therapy: County Heirlooms and Pandemic Cooking
“We hope you’ll try making some of these recipes, and we encourage you to find ways to make them your own. And we also hope this book inspires you, wherever you live, to find personal ways to connect ...
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October 31, 2020Book Therapy: Peter Counter’s Be Scared of Everything
“Life is all we have and, because we can’t contrast our experience with its absence, its value is unknowable. That’s what makes life a horror show.”—Peter Counter, Be Scared of Everything Lately ...
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January 12, 2022Acclaimed Poet D.A. Lockhart on Taxidermied Iguanas, Poetry "Shipbreakers", and the Importance of Endings
Poet D.A. Lockhart brings an energy, wisdom, and urgency to his writing as he shares meditations on and explorations of Indigenous identity and history. That energy clearly extends to his work ethic; ...
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May 12, 2023
Class, History, Fiction, and Form Part 5: The Speak o the Mearns
My parents are renters, so we moved houses a lot growing up. How can you expect continuity under those conditions, the steady passage of an uncomplicatedly teleological time? We can’t point to the place ...
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June 30, 2020Alex Pugsley Gets to the Heart of Halifax in His Debut Novel
In certain stories, the setting itself becomes a character, containing all the rich history and moody dynamics of the people who occupy it. Such is the case with Alex Pugsley's debut novel Aubrey McKee ...
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November 24, 2010Inside the University of Guelph Creative Writing MFA at Guelph-Humber, with Catherine Bush
Catherine Bush, novelist and associate program coordinator of the University of Guelph Creative Writing MFA at Guelph-Humber, talks to Open Book about their unique writing program, the award-winning mentoring ...
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September 01, 2016The Lucky Seven Interview, with Bianca Lakoseljac
Toronto is sometimes criticized as an unfriendly city, but it had a very different atmosphere back in 1967 — during the so-called "Summer of Love". Yorkville was full of hippies, draft dodgers flooded ...
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May 16, 2016Arguing Balls and Strikes
I always come back to baseball. As subject, I mean. Each time I think I'm done writing about it, or that I'd be better off focusing exclusively on the production of fiction, something occurs on a green ...
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May 11, 2016On Doubt
It'll be your constant companion. You won't know a day without it. It will defy cold logic and your efforts to cultivate confidence. It will be haughtily contemptuous of your desire to focus on positives, ...
