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August 18, 2023Picture Book Trends
Picture books, like all art forms, are subject to trends and shifts in theme, style and format. I don’t necessarily recommend writing to trend, but it’s always good to be familiar with what’s working ...
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September 14, 2023The Pull of Two Needles
My first version of this essay was about how my two obsessions, knitting and writing, don’t compete with each other. I wrote at length about how they spin together in my brain in complicated steps, ...
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November 30, 20237 Ways to Develop Secondary Characters
Many authors do a good job at developing their protagonist or POV characters. After all, readers will be in these characters’ heads throughout an entire book. But as many readers can attest to, sometimes ...
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August 12, 2024Rajinderpal S. Pal Explores Family Secrets, Painful Compromises, and the Promises We Break in However Far Away
Already a critically acclaimed stage performer and poet, Rajinderpal S. Pal has distilled a secret love affair, cultural complexities, and family drama into his new novel. It's a stunning debut by the ...
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September 12, 2018How to Finish Your Damn Book - For Beginners!
I often joke that writing a novel is like running a marathon---only no one bothers to tell you what the route is. When the gun goes off, you’re just supposed to head off in whatever direction you think ...
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September 15, 2016Writers' Trust Announces Journey Prize Nominees!
The Writers' Trust/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize is a unique literary award — not only does it honour individual short stories, rather than novels or full collections, it also spawns the annual, ...
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May 23, 2019Casey Plett Wins $60,000 Amazon First Novel Award for Little Fish
Last night at a ceremony in Toronto, Casey Plett captured the prestigious Amazon Canada First Novel Award for Little Fish (Arsenal Pulp Press). The author of a previous short story collection, A Safe ...
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November 08, 2017"What's Your Story?" 2017 Obpo Writing Contest Winners! Part Three: North York
For the third edition of the 2017 Ontario Book Publishers Organization's and North York Arts’ What's Your Story? writing contest, we are presenting brand new, original work in three genres, exclusively ...
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August 21, 2018THREAD! The Role of the Twitter Essay in CanLit
When most people think of Twitter, they think of the short and pithy 280-character messages that the platform is best known for. But perhaps the most interesting content on the social network is shared ...
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May 30, 2018"I Try to Find the Shape of a Poem" Talking to the Griffin Poetry Prize Finalists about Process & Poetry
When it comes to poetry, it doesn't get any bigger than the Griffin Poetry Prize. The two $75,000 prizes (one for a Canadian collection of poetry, one for an international collection) not only has one ...
