CanLitTag
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March 19, 2019
How Twitter Transformed My Writing Life
“Ugh, I’m on Twitter and I hate it,” I remember telling a friend and fellow writer at her birthday party last year.The room was full of writers and the conversation had somehow shifted to talk about ...
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January 15, 2019
On Re-Fusing CanLit--Or Why We Need Integrity, Community, and Roses
In a lot of the trauma memoirs I’ve been reading lately, I see the same metaphor used to describe the process of healing. You’ve likely heard it too. It compares healing from trauma to the Japanese ...
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September 12, 2018
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 ...
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August 31, 2018
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 ...
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August 21, 2018
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 ...
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July 31, 2018
On writers, politics, and when to just stop talking
Once upon a time, before the age of social media, Canlit was inclusive and kind, and political differences were settled amicably over whisky in private festival hospitality suites and the kind of dark ...
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July 04, 2018
Dayne Ogilvie Winner Ben Ladouceur on the Intense Craving to Read beyond His Own Intersections
In June, Ben Ladouceur added the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for Emerging LGBTQ+ Writers to his list of honours (which already included the Earle Birney Poetry Prize and a Lambda nomination). The 12-year old ...
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April 24, 2018
FOLD Authors Kusow, Maynard & Robertson on Diversity in CanLit, Festival Life & Recommended Reads
The Festival of Literary Diversity (aka the FOLD) is nearly here! The fastest-growing literary festival in the country is back for a third year, running from May 3 to May 6, 2018 with an incredible line ...
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February 23, 2018
Sorry Not Sorry: On Writing a Good Apology
To some extent, public apologies always are a little false. We’ve had no shortage of them recently. Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey and Louis C.K. come to mind. Their statements always feel removed from ...
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February 16, 2018
On reading politically, or why the good old days are a flat out lie
It’s a funny time in the world of words. Every morning, when I log into Twitter, people are debating freedom of expression and the politics of how we read. Some of this is just nonsense, really just ...