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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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April 12, 2016Why Don’t We Take Sports Writing Seriously?
In February of last year, Canadian Notes and Queries publisher Dan Wells kindly approached me with a question. “Brainstorming a games issue of CNQ,” he wrote in an email. “Wondered if you might ...
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May 13, 2014Words & Curds: Alena Graedon, Author of the Word Exchange
On April 23, I met with debut American author Alena Gradeon, who just released her first novel, a language-based dystopian thriller called The Word Exchange, published by Random House Canada. Graedon, ...
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May 23, 2014Words & Curds: Ben Hatke, Creator of Zita the Spacegirl
On May 11, I whisked comics creator Ben Hatke (Zita the Spacegirl, Flight) away from the Toronto Comics Arts Festival to enjoy some poutine and undergo an interrogation. The American writer and illustrator ...
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May 16, 2014Words & Curds: Ed Piskor & Tom Scioli, Pittsburgh Cartoonists Extraordinaire
On May 6, Toronto's streets were already alive with cartoonists and comic book artists. The Toronto Comic Arts Festival was just days away and a number of acclaimed comic-makers were roaming the city's ...
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May 02, 2014Words & Curds: Jonas T. Bengtsson, Author of a Fairy Tale
On April 16, I met with Danish author Jonas T. Bengtsson, whose newest English translation, A Fairy Tale, has just been published by House of Anansi. He was in town for the IFOA Weekly readings. We visited ...
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May 08, 2014Words & Curds: Matthew Zapruder, Author of Sun Bear
On April 22, I met with American poet Matthew Zapruder, the poet behind such books as the acclaimed The Pajamaist (Copper Canyon, 2006) and Come On All You Ghosts (Copper Canyon, 2010). In addition ...
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March 08, 2018
Write well, write better, write often.
In my introductory Q&A I gave an abbreviated account of how I write, and in particular how I wrote my first novel. I always find other writers’ processes interesting, so I thought I’d talk about ...
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November 03, 2017Writers & Money - Part Three
This is next installment in a series of surveys that I posted in order to get an idea of how different writers manage to make ends meet. You can read the first response here: http://open-book.ca/News/Writers-and-Money and ...
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October 03, 2017Writers & Money - Part Two
This is the second in a series of surveys that I posted in order to get an idea of how different writers manage to make ends meet. You can read the first response here: http://open-book.ca/News/Writers-and-Money ...