Columnists

Calling All Aspiring Authors: Never Ask an Illustrator to Illustrate Your Picture Book for Free

A few weeks ago, I was in a local tavern with some friends—a few of them are professional illustrators. They were drinking overpriced mocktails and commiserating about the emails they get from aspiring ...

On Fairy Tales

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live…[w]e look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition ...

An Interview with Paul Vermeersch

Self-Defense for the Brave and Happy, the sixth collection by poet, professor, artist and editor. Paul Vermeersch, feels like a flashlight found in a blackout. By his own admission, when writing the poems, ...

Bad Reviews and Broken Hearts: How to Deal with All the Feelings

First: Spend several years working on you—I mean, a manuscript. Revise each draft based on feedback from your therapist—I mean, editor. Get Tinder—I mean, get publishing deal. Agonize over each ...

A Tribute to Literary Friendships

“Are you a writer?” I asked the girl standing on the other side of the table.I was manning a booth for a writing program at an outdoor literary festival. It was cold and attendance was down. Most ...

An Interview with Shazia Hafiz Ramji

“My Instinct was to Listen and Notice in Order to Survive.” - Shazia Hafiz RamjiIn her debut collection, Port of Being, Vancouver poet Shazia Hafiz Ramji manages to take the personal and make it into ...

Why Does It Take So Long to Make a Picture Book?: Or, How To Get Really Good at Waiting

I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t prepared for all the waiting I’d have to do in life. And when it comes to writing, you do a lot of waiting. Waiting for inspiration to strike. Realizing that ...

Coming to Voice

I worked on this piece while at a residency for BIPOC writers in the fall of 2017. I did not pick it up again when I returned. While workshopping it there, I was not convinced it captured what I was trying ...

A draft

For years my partner and I lived in a condo, one of the four sides of which was flanked by windows, only one. The world was out there and we were in here, boxed, safe, separate, tucked away in the proscenium. ...

How to Finish Your Damn Book - For Beginners!

I often joke that writing a novel is like running a marathon---only no one bothers to tell you what the route is. When the gun goes off, you’re just supposed to head off in whatever direction you think ...