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April 12, 2018Mark Frutkin on Describing Characters and Writing a Literal Devil's Advocate
In Mark Frutkin's The Rising Tide (Porcupine's Quill), it's 1769 in Venice and things are getting pretty strange. From a man with a skeleton strapped to his back to a courtesan with odd stigmata marks, ...
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July 31, 2018Tanis MacDonald on How We Can Expand Our Idea of the Writing Life to Include Smaller Communities
The stereotype of the artist and writer tends to be an urban one - tiny apartments; cigarettes and whisky; gritty, loud, and busy streets outside the window. But where do these pictures come from and, ...
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November 15, 2018
The Importance of YA
Now that I’ve talked a lot about how I got to this point in my writing career, it seems important that I focus on why I choose to write young adult fiction. It seems, to me anyway, that despite the ...
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May 14, 2019"Like a Marilynne Robinson Book in a Spangly Jumpsuit" Missy Marston on Her Fabulous New Daredevil Novel, Bad Ideas
Ottawa-based author Missy Marston's second novel Bad Ideas (ECW Presss), is all heart, packed with humour, vivid and memorable writing, and unforgettable characters. Not to mention it has a rocket ...
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August 27, 2019Heads or Tails: On Writing Myself Into the Narrative
Last spring I competed for—and won—an executive position in the arts. When I found out, I was thrilled because, let’s be honest, the industry is predominantly cis, white, and male, and I was all ...
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September 27, 2019On Building a House
When I was a young girl throwing myself into books, I I remember how I used to pull random books from library shelves without concern about what the book was about or who wrote it. I ran my hands down ...
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January 14, 2020"I Felt It Was Time to Collect the Pieces and Document Them" Lamees Al Ethari Confronts the Past in Her New Memoir
The 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq was, ostensibly, a mission of liberation. For the Iraqi people, however, the end result was years of displacement, painful separation, and a sudden dissolving of the structure ...
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August 28, 2018Back to School: Authors on Their Favourite School-Centric Stories & Books
It sneaks up on us every year, but it's nearly that time - back to school time. Even if you've been out of the hallowed halls of learning for many years, you can't help but notice it every September.To ...
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July 23, 2019Why I Don’t Announce My Social Media Breaks
Over the past couple of years, I’ve watched several writers announce that they’re taking a break from social media. Sometimes they edit their profile so that their status, “on hiatus,” is added ...
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June 13, 2019"What Does a Family Do When it Becomes Lost to Itself?" Caitlin Galway on Exploring Loss in her Compelling, Gothic Debut Novel
The French Quarter of New Orleans has captured the literary imagination in a way few neighbours can claim to have done. Packed with history and just a whiff of the Gothic, it's an atmospheric wonder that ...