ColumnistsTag

How to tame your nerves at a live/online reading

The other week, I stood on the edge of a stage down at Harbourfront, waiting for my cue. I wasn’t nervous about reading. After a year of online events, I was excited to read to a live audience, but ...

A Writer’s Guide to Reading in 2022

I read a lot of books in 2021. More than I ever have, except for maybe the summers when I was eight and would clear out the chapter book section at Humber Bay library. I have always been an escapist, ...

December Gratitude: Check Out 5 of Our Favourite Columns from 2021

Today we're sharing the second instalment of December Gratitude, our round-up of some of our favourite postings from 2021. If you missed the first one, featuring some incredible 2021 writer-in-residence ...

Daniel Scott Tysdal Examines the Darkness, Strangeness, & Flickering Hope of Life in the 21st Century in His Spectacular Debut Story Collection

Daniel Scott Tysdal is a beloved creative writing professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough and a decorated poet. And of course, Tysdal is also an Open Book columnist and the subject of one ...

On Synchronicity and Writing: The Path Back to Myself

Last month, I had the privilege of going on a road trip across Northern BC as part of an author’s tour organized by the BC and Yukon Book Prizes, for which my book of poems, Port of Being, was a finalist. ...

Beyond the Possible: On World Building

Sometimes, I think about what would have happened to Frodo and Sam if, during their journey across the land to Mordor, Frodo had fallen down a jagged slope of rocks and broken his leg.Would Frodo, delirious ...

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 ...

Scarborough: A Setting

When I was growing up in Scarborough, I loved it and hated it. I don’t think it’s an uncommon feeling towards places where we grew up. But there are things about coming of age in a suburb as a racialized ...

The Final Days of Summer Reading

As we find ourselves in last gasps of summer (how is it already August?) it’s time to park it on the back porch and really focus on that list of carefully chosen seasonal reads.The summer book really ...

Tokenism vs. Inclusion

Last month, I wrote a piece about my frustrations with the lack of diversity in Canada’s publishing industry. In the comments, it was mentioned that while some folks are trying to make improvements, ...