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April 20, 2023"Conflict is the Engine that Drives Fiction" Leanne Lieberman on the Magic of Writing for Teens
When her dad hits rock bottom—again—Jess finds herself determined to change her stars and avoid going down the same dark path. She takes a job cleaning a beautiful country house, where part of her ...
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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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December 06, 2024In the New Speculative YA Novel, Defy, a Brave Teenager Fights to Save His Sister from the Clutches of an Authoritarian State
Narratives about dystopian autocracies have been written for many decades now, but each generation of writers finds new inspiration in the examples from the world they live in. These stories can issue ...
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January 16, 2025Owen Sound Author Richard J. Thomas Tells the Fascinating Story of the King's Royal Hotel and the Balmy Beach Pavilion
Just north of Owen Sound, and shortly after the turn of the 20th Century, the mighty King's Royal Hotel was built. It had been intended to rival the finest resorts in the world, but by 1914 this once ...
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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 ...
