Columnists

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 ...

On the future of Canlit

You guys, this is my last Open Book column.I have been writing this column for a year now and I’ll admit I didn’t know what I was going to write about when Holly Kent and Kevin Hardcastle asked me ...

An Open Letter to the Stranger Who Asked Me, “How Did You Write That Book for Children If You Don't Have Children?”

Dear Stranger,I realize that writing a book is kind of a self-important undertaking. When I write, I sometimes imagine that there are people out there who might actually enjoy reading my words and letting ...

THREAD! The Role of the Twitter Essay in CanLit

When most people think of Twitter, they think of the short and pithy 280-character messages that the platform is best known for. But perhaps the most interesting content on the social network is shared ...

Form as Home

Every time I sit down to write, I find myself exasperated by the considerations. The considerations of who will be reading it, how it’ll be interpreted, if it’ll hurt someone within or outside my ...

Defending your writing

Ever since I can remember, I wanted to be a writer. As a kid, I read everything in my library from A – Z. I was the secretary of the Library Club and loved my after-school gig of sorting the books according ...

An interview with Jaime Forsythe

“How I fit myself into my work is something I’m still figuring out.”Jamie Forsythe’s I Heard Something finds mystery in the common place. Domestic scenes take on a surrealistic quality as the ...