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October 14, 2020
Colleen Nelson on Bringing Playfulness to Picture Books, Her Favourite Canadian Kids' Books, & More
Whether you're a parent or just remembering your own school days, everyone can relate to the jangling nerves that come with starting a new school or new stage as a student. In Colleen Nelson's loveable ...
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July 06, 2023
Colleen Nelson on Setting Her New Kids' Novel in One of New York's Most Unique Historical Properties
Umbrella House in New York City is a unique urban phenomenon. Abandoned in the late 70s, it was sealed up with cinderblocks and cement until several years later when a group of squatters moved in. Over ...
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September 02, 2020
Combat Populism with an Excerpt from Jonathan Manthorpe's Restoring Democracy in an Age of Populists and Pestilence
It's been hard to miss the rising tide of populism that has crept into democratic discourse in North American and Europe in the past decade. What to do about it and what it means are trickier challenges, ...
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June 15, 2017
Combatting Oppression With Community
Two months ago, I attended Fuel for Fire, a professional development conference for writers of colour, organized by the Ontario Arts Council. The event provided a venue for discussions about writing and ...
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June 08, 2014
Comfort Food, Comfort Reading, Comfort Movie
My new novel The Oakdale Dinner Club is very food-centric – it’s about a group of suburbanites who get together once a month to eat good food, drink good wine, and do other wicked things.One of the ...
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June 27, 2016
Comic: What Did Ben McNally Do When He Wasn't Selling Books?
I must have met Ben McNally weeks after moving to Canada. The details are a little fuzzy on when that was. It might have been at Harbourfront for IFOA, or maybe at Nicholas Hoare, where he was selling ...
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May 06, 2016
Comics in Parkdale - the Draw of a Good Comic Book Store
My interest in superhero movies has plunged to zero in the past couple of years, but I’ve found myself steadily reading more comic books. Thinking about this just after the recent Authors for Indies ...
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September 27, 2018
Coming to Voice
I worked on this piece while at a residency for BIPOC writers in the fall of 2017. I did not pick it up again when I returned. While workshopping it there, I was not convinced it captured what I was trying ...
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November 23, 2020
Comparing Myself with May from My Day With Gong Gong
Writing May, the main character in my kids book My Day With Gong Gong, was a joy! It was my first time writing from the perspective of a kid as an adult, and for kids as a main audience. A lot of her ...
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April 07, 2014
Compression
In Stephanie Bolster’s “A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth,” the writing is acutely compressed, each word standing in for what in another poet’s hands might take pages. There’s no room ...