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May 24, 2018
In Praise of … Reading Widely
I wonder if other writers feel a particular dread I sometimes get when I’m working on a new story or poem. It happens when an idea, or an approach, or a certain trope comes into my mind, one that suddenly ...
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June 21, 2018"The Poet’s Responsibility is to His or Her Poem" Darren Bifford on Poetry Culture & Community
Darren Bifford's False Spring (Brick Books) is devastatingly timely, concerned as it is with the concept of collapse and cultural crisis. Tough, urgent, and unabashed, the poems in the collection push ...
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October 01, 2018Why Does It Take So Long to Make a Picture Book?: Or, How To Get Really Good at Waiting
I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t prepared for all the waiting I’d have to do in life. And when it comes to writing, you do a lot of waiting. Waiting for inspiration to strike. Realizing that ...
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June 27, 2018Why Do We Keep Picture Book Authors and Illustrators Apart? - or How to Play Well With Others
I completely underestimated how emotional the whole process of creating a picture book would be. When my first picture book was being published, I became a horrible self-involved troll-person. I couldn’t ...
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September 11, 2018Tamara Faith Berger on The Happy Hooker, Judy Blume, & Her Fantasy Pick for Canada Reads
There's nobody quite like Tamara Faith Berger, whose striking, smart, erotic, and memorable writing upends every CanLit stereotype and has won her legions of devoted readers. She returns this fall ...
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September 27, 2018You’re Going the Right Way. It’s Just a Really, Really Long Way.
I’m often asked by aspiring writers, “How did you become an author?” or “How did you get into the publishing world?”I used to think this was a really tough question. Because of course there’s ...
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September 06, 2018Anatomy of a Short Story, or Where I Get (Some of) My Ideas
I’m not one of those writers who makes everything up completely from scratch. And seriously, do those writers even exist? (If they do, I am jealous of them.)In my fiction, almost everything comes from ...
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March 11, 2019Writing and illustrating children’s books: All the surprises
The process of writing, illustrating and publishing a children’s book can be filled with surprises—good and bad! For example, I’m always surprised by how much my heart explodes when a friend sends ...
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February 24, 2019Poetry School: Getting specific with Amiri Baraka
Writing is reading, teaching is learning. As I said in my invitation for readers to join me this month-long online Poetry School, I expected to benefit the most from these researches into the craft and ...
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July 11, 2019Nadja Lubiw-Hazard on Creating her Scarborough Novel, The Nap-Away Motel, as "Grounded in a Sense of Place"
In a unique hotel in Scarborough, three strangers are trying to rebuild what's broken in their lives and families. Suleiman, Tiffany, and Ori are all searching for something, and all finds themselves ...