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October 24, 2022
Rusted Development
For decades I’ve been cruising antique haunts and farm fields, stopping at those laden with dormant pieces of rusted equipment - harrows, cultivators, thrashers, sickle bars among them. I’m drawn ...
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October 13, 2022
The Legend of Howard Stroud
Sometimes when I’m feeling sad or needing inspiration I think of Howard. I met Howard in 2016 when I travelled out west to research the family homestead and to walk the same land my mother did as ...
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October 11, 2022
Plain Tired
Part I 4:35 p.m.I’m just plain tired. I don’t usually write exhausted, but I want to be in the ‘best’ space to describe the chronic fatigue that bears on me. Not one spoon left today. (Spoon ...
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June 13, 2016Dismantling Jane Jordan’s Library
Throughout the process of distributing ten bins of books, chapbooks and other literary materials once owned by Ottawa poet Jane Jordan (1926-2007), there’s a slight guilt attached to dismantling her ...
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February 23, 2016Awful People Still Exist: Part One of Andrew F. Sullivan In Conversation
Andrew F. Sullivan already gained attention for his 2013 short story collection, All We Want Is Everything (ARP Books), and just three years later, he’s releasing his first novel WASTE (Dzanc Books), ...
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May 03, 2023
Class, History, Fiction, and Form Part 2: Is the Bicycle Dead?
Before I do anything else, I have to try to say what I mean by fictional forms. I do so with a lot of trepidation, because my sense of these things is idiosyncratic and perhaps wrong. But here goes.People ...
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April 09, 2017My final two columns: Part Two
As rob has mentioned, this is the second part of his final column for Open Book. The staff at Open Book would like to share our appreciation for a decade of columns, and for rob's contributions to the ...
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October 07, 2022
Best Advice
Good morning folks,Besides reading as much as you write, the best advice I received from other writers was to observe people. To watch them, to note their body language and actions, and if you can, ...
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June 26, 2024Read an Excerpt from Fungal: Foraging in the Urban Forest by Ariel Gordon
Though many of us live in urban surroundings, and may well be caught up in all of the concrete, glass, and metals that make up our neighbourhoods and streets, the natural world is always there, beneath ...
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November 08, 2018Karl Kessler & Sunshine Chen Honour Waterloo's Vanishing Trades with Stunning Portraits in Overtime
From shoemakers to sign painters, felt workers to glove cutters, there are countless skilled, traditional trades and jobs that are slowing disappearing from our increasingly mechanized existence. With ...