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October 30, 2015
How to Start an Author Blog
A lot’s been made about “author platforms” over the past few years. Marketers love jargon and “platform” is just another word for presence.“The line between writer and creative entrepreneur ...
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February 02, 2021Michael Grant on His (Naked) New Play & Creating a Fictional Small Town Across His Works
Norm and Ruth were just trying to get their marriage back on track. A simple idea: to head back to a place they knew they'd been happy and see if they can re-capture the spark there. But the struggling ...
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August 23, 2024Breaking Down the Ontario Arts Council’s Literary Creation Projects Grant
For writers in Ontario, this is your reminder that the deadline for Literary Creation Projects (Works for Publication) is just around the corner. This grant gives $12,000 to work on your novel, poetry ...
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November 22, 2018Calling All Aspiring Authors: Never Ask an Illustrator to Illustrate Your Picture Book for Free
A few weeks ago, I was in a local tavern with some friends—a few of them are professional illustrators. They were drinking overpriced mocktails and commiserating about the emails they get from aspiring ...
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May 02, 2019Facing the Double-Headed Dragon: Perfectionism and Fear
Guys. My last few weeks have been bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S. I am feeling a bit overwhelmed, so I hope you will all bear with me this month. There may be some punctuation errors here and there. Even a typo ...
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April 24, 2019What a Poem Does, Not what it Means
In an earlier post, I wrote that both writer and reader should focus more on how a poem comes to be.We seem to spend a disproportionate amount of time trying to understand what a poem means as opposed ...
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June 03, 2020
Hello From My Big Comfy Chair
I didn’t set out to be a kids’ writer. At first, I wrote parenting articles, travel pieces, government brochures, whatever I could get paid to write. It turned out my most successful efforts were ...
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October 14, 2021Canada Council Announces 2021 Governor General's Literary Award Finalists
This morning the Canada Council announced the English and French language finalists for the Governor General's Literary Awards. The seven categories cover multiple genres. The fiction list is often compared ...
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October 25, 2023Naben Ruthnum on His Delightfully Creepy YA Horror Debut, a Spooky Love Letter to the 90s
Behind the facade of small towns lurk many things – something high schooler Vish knows all too well in acclaimed author Naben Ruthnum's first foray into young adult fiction, The Grimmer (ECW Press).Vish's ...
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October 03, 2017Gillian Sze on the Meaning Behind her New Title
For the non-botanists among us, the title of Gillian Sze's bold new poetry collection Panicle (ECW Press) may initially be puzzling. But that challenge - to work a little harder, to look a little closer, ...
