Search
-
March 18, 2014
Writing Sex
"And Panhuyzen really gives good sex.” ~National Post, August 1999 Sex! Did you hear that, sex! We’re talking about sex today. Oh, what’s that, you don’t want to talk about sex? Well, too bad, ...
-
May 12, 2016Strength in Brevity: A List for Short Story Month
Maybe it's fitting that I'm the Writer-in-Residence for May, since somebody, somewhere decided this is Short Story Month, and the short story is far and away my favourite literary form. In the past, Steven ...
-
August 08, 2020A sentence & a breath
You want to write a book. Terrific! You've thought about this for years. In fact, whenever you tell your stories, people always say, you should write a book. And they’re right! You should. There’s ...
-
March 25, 2014If not DRM, What Then? (Part I)
Over the next few days, I’m going to discuss DRM – Digital Rights Management – a way of “locking” a digital product, such as an ebook, to control its distribution. This has become a controversial ...
-
May 03, 2016Some of the Best Books I Ever Read Weren't Books at All
I am on the record—somewhere, or perhaps multiple somewheres—as having said that one of the stories in my first collection, What You Need, represented an effort on my part to capture the feel of a ...
-
May 31, 2020Signing off.
Horrific day to be posting this last entry. The violence and harm inflicted on Black people is enraging. Seeing the failure of some to recognize this terror—or worse be complacent and perpetuate it—can ...
-
April 25, 2015
Geology, Thinking, and a Tent
As Jan Zwicky’s Wittgensteinian “The Geology of Norway” kept and keeps circling through my mind and body, I remembered Liz Howard’s gorgeous poem, “Thinktent,” which also works with, among ...
-
April 24, 2015
On Being Led by a Poem
Yesterday evening, a friend emailed me a copy of Jan Zwicky’s “The Geology of Norway” from the collection Songs for Relinquishing the Earth (Brick Books, 1998). I’d never read the poem before, ...
-
April 07, 2015
Parenthetical: On Neural Transformation:
(One of the things I’ve been reading about recently and am deeply engaged with is the idea of neuroplasticity. The internal reality formed by neuroplasticity—the ability of the brain to alter in response ...
-
April 14, 2015
Thinking (Again and More) with M. NourbeSe Philip's Zong!
In returning to thinking about Zong!, I’m also returning to the idea of neuro-plasticity, the forming and deforming inscriptions experience leaves on the brain. When reading Zong! or when listening ...
