Search
-
May 07, 2020
Watching a Storm.
There was one anecdote that for some reason didn't evolve into a story in my collection Coconut Dreams. My young sibling characters, Ally and Aiden, are in the garage of their quiet suburban townhome. ...
-
September 26, 2014On Pseudonyms: Q&A with Michael Redhill
On pseudonyms a.k.a. aliases a.k.a. handles a.k.a. avatars a.k.a. monikers a.k.a. sobriquets ak.a. epithets a.k.a. pen names a.k.a. nicknames a.k.a. noms de guerres a.k.a. anon.:Q&A with Michael Redhill, ...
-
October 08, 2014Shifting Gears
Dear Open Bookers,It’s a pleasure to be this month’s Writer-in-Residence. I look forward to sharing thoughts and ideas with you over the coming weeks!Monday morning, I arrived at the Banff Centre ...
-
September 24, 2014Which ‘I’ This ‘I.
After my second book, Post-Apothecary, came out, I was given the chance to read at some of our writers’ festivals. One event in Ontario had three poets and a host who introduced us and facilitated the ...
-
July 19, 2015
At the Start of a New Creative Writing Class
I’m about to teach a new class, “Writing That Resonates,” starting tomorrow at Haliburton School of the Arts and, as happens each time, I pause.The students in the room will be diverse. Some will ...
-
May 18, 2016Faking It
Writers' early careers are characterized by a sort of inconsistent confidence, a herky-jerky belief in themselves and their divinely appointed mission interspersed with paralyzing instances of clarity ...
-
July 11, 2014A Story That No One Owns
I’m sure my point is only too plain… Lizzie is not dead, etc.—but there is a “mixture of fact & fiction,” and you have changed her letters. That is “infinite mischief,” I think…. ...
-
July 25, 2015
The Anti-Block
People like to talk about writer’s block, the horrible dead end feeling of a blank page and nothing to write, or of a work in progress that has lost its energy and for which the writer can find no direction.But ...
-
October 05, 2015
Why You Need a Creative Manifesto (And How to Write Your Own)
I wrote my first creative manifesto in 2011, inspired by author and blogger Justine Musk’s own efforts to do the same after she wrote about the competition for a writer’s attention these days.It isn’t ...
-
March 29, 2021
Writing/Not Writing
Some language cracks the shell of a thing open, so we can newly see what’s being described. And some language forms a perfect egg shell around what it aims to describe, obscuring more than it reveals. ...
