Ontario book news, interviews and more

CBC Canada Reads Day One Recap: 2022 is Anyone's Game

CBC's Canada Reads kicked off this morning at 11:00am ET, with each of the five panelists proving themselves eloquent champions for their chosen novels. Host Ali Hassan followed the format of previous ...

What's Beyond: Writing as an Actor, Part 2

One of the important exercises we do in theatre is called “What’s Beyond.” It’s a Viola Spolin exercise to help actors understand the full, inner life of their characters. Viola Spolin is credited ...

Writing as an Actor

I went to theatre school when I was 18. In many ways it was the worst choice I could have made. I was not temperamentally suited to the life of an actor. But the lessons I learned in theatre school have ...

Locked Down and Longing for Community: The Genesis of The Quarantine Review

It started in a pub on the Danforth, the bar filled with older gentlemen dejected at the cancellation of the Dave Mason concert at the Music Hall a half-block away. COVID wasn’t real to them yet, as ...

"I am a Listener First" The 2022 Canada Reads Panelists on Keeping Open Minds & Hearts in the Big Book Battle

The clock is ticking: next week, CBC Canada Reads is back for 2022, with a superstar line up of books that makes it impossible to guess the eventual winner (just the way we like it!).The 2022 panelist ...

Playwright & Passe Muraille Artistic Director Marjorie Chan on Writing the Scenes That "Need to Get Out" First

Librettist and playwright Marjorie Chan, who serves as Artistic Director of Toronto's iconic Theatre Passe Muraille while also creating her own plays and librettos, has a knack for exploring power, ...

Writing as a Calligrapher

The word calligraphy comes from the Greek. Kali, meaning beautiful, and Graphos, meaning writing. Beautiful writing. It’s a term that was coined after the invention of the printing press, after the ...

"Canadian Stories in Conversation with the Wider World" Publisher Leigh Nash on Taking Up the Iconic Anansi Mantle

House of Anansi Press is, undoubtedly, a main character in the long and fascinating novel that is Canadian literature. Based in Toronto and founded in 1967 by Dennis Lee and Dave Godfrey during a time ...

Making the Leap: Why Writing Programs Matter Right Now

I’ve been on campus exactly once since March 2020, during the height of one of the province’s lockdowns, to pack up my old office at Humber College’s Lakeshore Campus. I was leaving my post as the ...

A Great Kids' Book is "a Kind of Graffiti": Sara Cassidy on Why Wonder, Not Instruction, is at the Centre of Her Writing

A little girl tosses a snack to some birds at a bus stop. It's a small gesture, but in Sara Cassidy's Flock (Groundwood Books, illustrated by Geraldo Valério), it becomes the jumping off point for a ...