Writer in residence blogTag

Poetry Tours: Funding

Last time on the WIR blog, I talked about tips for planning a poetry tour, including tips on building a tour from existing events. In this post, I hope to share some resources on funding a poetry tour, ...

Was It Worth It?

Was it worth it? I get asked this a lot.I think they are asking if putting in all the time, effort and emotional labour to write a vulnerable and raw memoir about trauma, is worth it. Like, if I say yes, ...

Procrastination Station

It’s just shy of midnight and I’m sitting here, writing this, thinking about how I should have started it sooner. But if I had started it sooner, would it have been finished before now?If this question ...

The Joy of Literary Festivals – And Dreams Coming True

It’s hard to believe we’ve come to the end of September and that the time I have been privileged to spend with you on this Open Book platform is almost over. Looking back at what I have shared with ...

Insomniable Grief

Many moons have fallen this way since last did I stand here,the stairwell yawning before me,my naked feet cold and full of pain in the night surrounding meand beneath me gaping back an ocean brackishly ...

In All Fairness Though

In all fairness though, and this is something that I've had thoughts about for a great long time, conflicted ones at best so I'm sure some of what I'm writing about I'll get wrong. Yesterday I wrote that ...

13 Grant Writing Tips

I am not great at a lot of things, but I am great at writing grants. Not my own, particularly, but for others. I fell into grant writing out of necessity—writing my own in my contemporary dancer days, ...

Falling in love with audiobooks

I used to have to walk to get my babies to sleep in the stroller. I would walk and walk until they were asleep, loops of the same block, and then I’d sit on a bench, the one bench in my entire neighbourhood, ...

An ode to letter writing

Writing Letters to Amelia took a long time—finding the form, and the voice, and then the plot, it all took years. When it was time to write the letters from Amelia Earhart to her rumoured lover, Gene ...

MUSE ON THE LAM

Today’s post is about what to do when your muse goes AWOL. When your muse is a contrarian like mine is, getting them to show up for work often requires lengthy debates. Who has that extra time?The ...