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August 20, 2020Read an Excerpt from John Bentley Mays' The Occidental Hotel
In the late John Bentley Mays' final book, The Occidental Hotel (Guernica Editions), a grizzled, racist criminal evades capture by holing up in a long-abandoned hotel, once a dazzling building that hosted ...
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March 01, 2020
Blogpost #8: TRENDING CURRENTLY: Top 8 Diverse Middle Grade and Young Adult Themes I’ve Observed
Dear Reader:This is my final post as the February 2020 Open Book Writer In Residence. (And, did you catch that this is the 8th blogpost and I am listing 8 middle grade and young adult themes? Didn’t ...
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August 05, 2016The Lucky Seven Interview, with Eve Zaremba
The Toronto Women’s Bookstore, Interval House, Rape Crisis Centres, and Broadside: A Feminist Review — Eve Zaremba's legacy for women in Toronto and beyond is so far-reaching it's hard to summarize. ...
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February 20, 2020The Kids Club Interview: Jennifer Maruno Explores the Complications of Tween Friendship In Her New Book
For kids enjoying their first years of social independence, negotiating new friendships can be overwhelming. Bonds are quickly made and broken, leaving confusion and tears in their wake. In her newest ...
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March 01, 2021
Writing violence (again)
On violence and trauma and repetition...When I was nineteen, I went to dinner at a friend’s, and afterwards, her father invited us all upstairs to see his attic art studio.There were so many canvasses ...
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May 08, 2022
Something New Under the Sun
"Writing is no trouble: you just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itself—it is the occurring which is difficult."~Stephen Leacock, Canadian HumoristI recently attended ...
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May 19, 2023Sandra V. Feder & Rahele Jomepour Bell on Creating a Picture Book that Celebrates Finding Peace Within
Anyone who spends time with children knows that when it comes to kids, the feelings are big. Happiness, sadness, anger – it's all magnified, and it's not always easy to navigate. Writer Sandra V. ...
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May 28, 2025Tim Welsh's Debut Novel, Ley Lines, is a Refreshing, Intimate Take on Frontier Life
Readers have seen frontier tales about the gold rush and mining boom towns before, many of which carry familiar tropes and trappings. But, our featured author today has written an original work that upends ...
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October 14, 2025Coltrane Seesequasis Continues the Powerful A Wolf in the Sun Series with THE THREADS OF TIME
In The Threads of Time (Kegedonce Press), the second novel in the A Wolf in the Sun series, the very talented Coltrane Seesequasis takes readers back to a world of ancient rivalries and haunting choices. ...
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April 26, 2017On Writing, with Erin Robinsong
Erin Robinsong's debut collection Rag Cosmology (BookThug) is an arrival - of a literary talent, a unique point of view, and an insightful connection between the ecological and the personal.Bringing ...
