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July 12, 2018
"Here Might Be a Path Out of Myself" Steve McOrmond on Discovering Poetry
Steve McOrmond's Reckon (Brick Books) is his first book since the widely-praised The Good News About Armageddon was published in 2010. Reckon is worth the wait, packed with poems that balance wit ...
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October 25, 2022
Guest Essay: A.G. Pasquella on Slipstream, New Weird, and the Wonderfully Strange History of "Weird Fiction"
A.G. Pasquella knows weird. He can do straight-laced and tightly plotted fiction, like his celebrated Jack Palace noir series, but he's equally known for his experimental, offbeat, and wonderfully wacky ...
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May 13, 2025
Read an Excerpt From The Fun Times Brigade by Lindsay Zier-Vogel
Lindsay Zier-Vogel has shown her valuable insights about writing life each month as an Open Book columnist, and she's been an integral part of the CanLit community for years now. So, it comes as no surprise ...
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June 13, 2018
"All Transformations Have a Cost" Dian Day on Her Arresting New Novel The Madrigal
It's no surprise that in a novel called The Madrigal (Inanna Publications), music is front and centre. Frederick (who shares a surname with the title) and his mother are both singers - but they experience ...
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May 10, 2018
In Praise of … Celebrating Success
Ours is a household that celebrates everything. Each year my wife and I mark the following occasions: the anniversary of our first date (March 19 – she gets roses, and we go back to the restaurant where ...
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December 18, 2017
The Swarm
My father would fill up our triple-seater truck with six bench seats worth of brats—his own and the neighbour’s--on any given Saturday. One Saturday, he told us that we were heading up Nanaimo Lakes ...
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November 04, 2015
On Writing Violence
Like all writers, I’m often asked what my writing is about. Especially with regards to my recently published collection of stories, Debris, and the novel that I am revising for publication next year ...
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June 09, 2020
Kids Club: Cary Fagan and Milan Pavlovic on The Creative Process Behind Their Gorgeous New Picture Book
The young protagonist of award-winning author Cary Fagan's new picture book Son of Happy (Groundwood) might be the only little boy who doesn't like birthday parties.Why, you ask? His father, a professional ...
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December 11, 2017
Getting to know Emily Anglin: Unrequited Teenage Love, the Allure of Gorey Covers, & the Book that Left Her Shaken
Emily Anglin's The Third Person (BookThug) is an electrifying debut. The uncanny short stories follow three characters whose worlds are, as the title suggests, disrupted when the third person arrives. ...
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August 10, 2017
Writing 101 as Inspired by Improv and Life
I’m hoping the tips in this post will be really helpful to beginner writers—people who have always wanted to write but just don’t sit down to write consistently for whatever reason. People who don’t ...