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March 15, 2018Debut Novelist Christine Higdon on Character, Synaesthesia, & the Importance of Names
Christine Higdon's debut novel, The Very Marrow of Our Bones (ECW Press), opens in 1967, with a tough town on the Fraser River descending into panic. Two women - Bette and Alice - have disappeared without ...
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March 14, 2018
How to hold a launch.
There comes a time in a writer’s life when, if you are very lucky, you will be published (frequently but not always a book) and you may feel the need to draw attention to it with some kind of hoohah. ...
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March 13, 2018"Titles are Chameleon in Nature" - Dani Couture on Poetry, Titles, & the Power of a Single Word
Dani Couture's fourth full length collection of poetry, Listen Before Transmit (Wolsak & Wynn), plunges readers into the unmistakable poetic voice that has earned Couture numerous honours during ...
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March 11, 2018
Escape from reality: Conventions, conferences and expos.
I haven’t spoken about it a whole lot, but just a few months before the The Bone Mother’s release, my mother died. While not unexpected, it was unpleasant, and of course brought a lot of memories ...
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March 09, 2018Author & Illustrator team Susan Hughes & Carey Sookocheff on the Ups and Downs of Publishing
Who hasn't had the feeling that they don't fit in? Despite the universality of feeling excluded, odd, and unworthy, we still struggle to find a way to reach kids experiencing those feelings, to curb bullying ...
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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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March 05, 2018"Loss and Absence Challenge Us to Become Who We Are": Kathleen Venema on Her Unique Mother-Daughter Memoir
The impact of mother-daughter relationships is hard to overstate. In Kathleen Venema's Bird-Bent Grass: A Memoir, in Pieces (Wilfrid Laurier University) the extraordinary influence of the mother-daughter ...
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March 04, 2018
Oh, the horror!
Here's some self-gossip for you: A few years ago, in the months leading up to the release date of my book, I was pleased to take part in Naked Heart, Toronto’s LGBTQ literary festival, and to read as ...
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March 01, 2018"My favourite Writing Moments Happen When a Character Surprises Me" Talking with Debut Middle Grade Author Sylv Chiang
Tournament Trouble (Annick Press) is the first book in the Cross Ups series from teacher and author Sylv Chiang (illustrations by Connie Choi). Perfect for video game obsessed middle grade readers, ...
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March 01, 2018
So here's the story.
People always ask, so here’s the story: On January 1, 2015, I started writing a new play titled The Thimble Factory. I knew a few things about it when I began—it would be a collection of monologues, ...