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November 30, 2023
Zain Bandali Uses Mehndi to Talk About Gender, Creativity, and Being Your True Self in His Delightful Debut
In Zain Bandali's Mehndi Boy (Annick Press), Tehzeeb loves to draw. He practices his clouds, patterns, stars, and more, as whole galaxies of beautiful and intricate designs swirl across his notebooks. ...
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April 09, 2014
Madness
Catching up on the frippery of “Downton Abbey,” I enjoyed Maggie Smith’s trenchant Dowager Countess of Grantham listening to her son wax a mite lyrically about land and history and then exclaiming ...
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April 04, 2014
Fame
Patrick Friesen is a true lyric poet, open and honest, singing more often than talking. His poems are almost bodiless, his words slowly turning into rivers. In “Earth’s Crude Gravities,” language ...
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April 24, 2014
Poetic
Tell a classroom of wannabe writers to try their hands at a poem and the stilted, strangely wrought language that ensues can be alarming. It’s like they’re being told to write in some World War II ...
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July 12, 2017
Cree storytelling, Cree novels
We live in interesting times. The speaking of Indigenous languages has declined in the last generation- especially where I come from (nihtâwikihcikanisihk). When I was younger, in the 1970s and 1980s, ...
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May 31, 2021
June 2021 Writer-in-Residence & Star Debut Novelist Samantha Garner on Skydiving, Kirtles, & Her Spy Passport
In a world where the gift of prophecy can turn you into a second class citizen, Freya loses everything when she has a dream foretelling her mother's death. Not only does she lose her mother when the premonition ...
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June 20, 2024
Premee Mohamed Returns With Another Spellbinding Novel
After winning a raft of awards for her previous novel, The Annual Migration of Clouds, author Premee Mohamed returns with an exploration of humanity and survival set against the backdrop of Alberta's ...
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October 31, 2018
November writer-in-residence & Double Debut Author Brian Wilkinson on the Books That Shaped Him
Brian Wilkinson decided to start his publishing life with a bang -- this fall, he's got not one, but two books out with Blue Moon Publishers as a double debut: Paramnesia and Battledoors: The Golden ...
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November 23, 2016
The Art of the Novel: Interview with Paul Butler
By Bianca Lakoseljac: OB Writer in Residence Almost a decade ago, after reading Paul Butler’s novel NaGeira, I felt that I needed to read everything this author writes. When I was president of the ...
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November 25, 2016
The Art of the Novel: Interview with Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer
By Bianca Lakoseljac: OB Writer in Residence Canadian Writers’ Summit, The International Festival of Authors, Word on the Street, literary readings and book signings—are some of the events that ...