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September 24, 2020Literary Ancestors
It’s said that every person has two families. There’s the one that you are born into and the one that you choose for yourself—your friends. But writers have a third family, the literary ancestors ...
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September 24, 20202020 CBC Nonfiction Prize Goes West with Five Writer Shortlist
This morning CBC Books announced the five finalists for the CBC Nonfiction Prize. Chosen from amongst a staggering 1700 entries from across Canada, these five writers have crafted true stories that ...
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September 23, 2020"Talent is Long Patience" Jack Wang on Teaching Writing & Why Talent and Genius Aren't The Endgame
Jack Wang's extraordinary debut book of stories, We Two Alone (House of Anansi Press) weaves a path across the world, following the Chinese diaspora over nearly a hundred years. It's the kind of collection ...
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September 22, 2020Lana Button's New Picture Book Helps Kids Cope with a Common Classroom Anxiety
New environments can be intimidating at any age, but all the changes that come with going to school as a kid can be especially tough. In Raj's Rule (Owlkids Books, illustrated by Hatem Aly) picture book ...
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September 21, 2020What Timothy Findley Taught Me
Unfortunately, it isn’t often that a major biography of a Canadian writer is published. Such a book takes years to write and costs the author a great deal, not only in work time but also in research ...
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September 18, 2020How writing rituals saved me from quitting as a writer
I define my writing ritual as a series of unique actions taken that tells my brain it’s writing and creation time. This is part preparation, part boundary-setting, part protective aura. I know that ...
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September 18, 2020CBC Books Announces 35-Writer Nonfiction Prize Longlist, including Kevin Chong & Adrienne Gruber
Yesterday CBC Books announced a whopping 35-writer longlist for the CBC Nonfiction Prize. One of three literary awards run by CBC (in addition to a poetry and a short fiction award), it's one of the ...
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September 18, 2020The Word on the Street: Authors Lamees Al Ethari, Karoline Georges, & Michelle Parise on Going Virtual for WOTS
An annual highlight of Toronto literary calendar, The Word on the Street brings together authors and book lovers for reading, discussions, workshops, and a massive literary marketplace. This year, of ...
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September 17, 2020To Pandemic or not to Pandemic
Surely any period of upheaval and uncertainty is a difficult one to start a novel. And here we are, seven months into the pandemic and with no end in sight. Let’s say that you’re a novelist ...
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September 16, 2020Adan Jerreat-Poole on Comfort Reads, Finding Identity in Fairy Tales, & One Fabulous L'Engle Quote
As readers enter Adan Jerreat-Poole's The Girl of Hawthorn and Glass (Dundurn Press), they sink into a richly rendered fantasy world at war, where witches' assassin are the most deadly of weapons. Like Eli, ...