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February 27, 2017Book Criticism Is Not Book Promotion
Most people won’t read most books. It seems like a truism, but it’s an important fact to keep in mind if you’re thinking of reviewing a book. Whether it’s a brief write-up in an industry magazine ...
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August 12, 2016Pleasant Days … with Stu and Crad
My basement excavations — the chaotic and ecstatic unpacking of dozens of boxes of cryogenically preserved books — recently produced a copy of a chapbook I haven’t thought about in decades. Pleasant ...
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March 29, 2021Speaking Your Story into Existence
Over the winter I was part of two separate online writing residencies through the Banff Centre. Each cohort involved wonderfully talented writers from across the land, sharing their stories, truths, and ...
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April 19, 2018"Donaldson Has His Obsessions" An Unusual Interview with Poet Jeffery Donaldson's Evil Twin
Jeffery Donaldson’s Fluke Print digs into the groundwork of poetry, examining and reimagining creativity, intellect, and the emotional landscape in poems that are subtle and precise, packed with quiet ...
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September 08, 2015
Literary Perturbations: Math, Rhythm, and the Unforgettable Sentence
I want to write about perturbations created by literature, how when you’re reading something that connects to you, you can feel shaken, disoriented almost, like everything in the world has suddenly ...
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June 17, 2024Mentorship: Part II - Author Roundtable
After chatting with Rudrapriya Rathore, the founder and manager of the Flying Books Mentorship Program about the value of having a mentor, I turned to fellow authors to chat about what mentorship has ...
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November 13, 2017David Huebert on Inspiring a Dress Code, Being Haunted by Cows, and his Bachelorette Canada Connection
David Huebert has been going from strength to strength recently, gathering successes in multiple genres including both the CBC Short Story Prize and the Walrus Poetry Prize. Now, just two years after ...
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August 31, 2018On the future of Canlit
You guys, this is my last Open Book column.I have been writing this column for a year now and I’ll admit I didn’t know what I was going to write about when Holly Kent and Kevin Hardcastle asked me ...
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March 28, 2019Writer at Work: “Identity is a pain in the arse” (On Zadie Smith)
Last month, Zadie Smith said: "identity is a pain in the arse." She said this at a festival in the context of a discussion about identity politics and her (white) partner, Nick Laird. Here's a snippet ...
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February 26, 2021
LOVE IN THE TIME OF COVID: The writing process Part 8 of 9
What happens when the unexpected occurs. As a writer, I like to throw unexpected elements in when things seem to be progressing smoothly. The same way I don’t conceive of a beginning or middle before ...
