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None listed on Open Book: Toronto

Shaun Smith

SHAUN SMITH'S SUNDAY SUNDRIES

A WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF INTERNET CURIOSITIES FROM THE BOOK WORLD Want to date a (Canadian) writer?

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Posted: Feb 11th, 2012 @ 07:07 AM

Upcoming Appearances

None listed on Open Book: Toronto

P.S. Jevanael

Toronto Publishing House Tour Round 1

Yesterday, Friday, I went off tripping to Toronto to tour the publishing houses, armed with some presentation material and some leave-behind packages.

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Posted: Feb 9th, 2012 @ 02:14 PM

Upcoming Appearances

None listed on Open Book: Toronto

Ava Homa

On Crafting a Piece of Fiction (2): Characterization

How to Create Characters who Breathe on the Page? When readers don’t sympathize with the characters, they lose interest in following the story.

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Posted: Sep 30th, 2007 @ 12:12 PM Todd Babiak Goodbye, Toronto, Goodbye Every writer in the provinces wants to be in Toronto. I cannot live in Toronto, of course, because I have no money and I am scared of smog.	Posted: Jun 7th, 2009 @ 07:19 PM Gregory Betts Jon Paul Fiorentino's stripmalling	Posted: Feb 28th, 2008 @ 08:20 PM Rick Blechta And as my time here draws to a close... Nearly a month has gone by and I'm actually getting a bit nostalgic here about Open Book Toronto. It's either that or the slice of pizza I had for lunch. It was pretty daunting starting out.
Posted: Jan 30th, 2012 @ 12:12 PM John Brady Against the grain: networking Yogi Berra, Vaclav Havel, a liking for trouble. Murphy’s Laws have no statute of limitations. If there is no Murphy’s Law to fit the situation that crashes over you, it’s an easy matter to write a new Murphy’s Law. This I do regularly.	Posted: Apr 30th, 2008 @ 10:10 AM Barry Callaghan Everything changes. Nothing changes. (part four) Continued from Everything changes. Nothing changes. (part three). Final blog.... So what is the point? Well, not long ago a man...an icon, a legend, a very special figure in the world of Canadian writing, died.	Posted: Jun 15th, 2011 @ 08:20 PM Edward Carson Review of "Sharawadji" by Brian Henderson (Brick Books 2011) Brian Henderson and I have been friends since the 1960s, so in a way I have both a unique advantage as well as disadvantage when it comes to his poetry.
Posted: May 1st, 2010 @ 12:00 AM Marta Chudolinska Free Comic Book Day Cometh! Hello Open Book Toronto and the internet at large! I am happy to kick off my bout/gout as Open Book's latest writer in residence by informing you about one of the world's most important events: May 1st...	Posted: Nov 27th, 2007 @ 05:17 PM Lynn Coady Harlan Ellison is my hero Do you remember some rap song from a few years back, the refrain of which was a lilting female voice asking: "Where's my money?	Posted: Nov 4th, 2010 @ 03:15 PM Joey Comeau "Try it before you buy it," as a book publishing model? I have a new book out called Bible Camp Bloodbath, and I published it using a print on demand service.
Posted: Jun 3rd, 2011 @ 08:08 AM The Great Canadian Writer's Craft The Great Canadian Writer's Craft Interview: Sandra Alland This spring, Toronto high-school students from two Writer's Craft classes conducted interviews with some of Canada's finest poets.	Posted: Apr 12th, 2011 @ 02:14 PM Adebe D.A. Hanging Out with Lawrence Hill and Wayde Compton at the GritLit Festival There I was, sitting in the sunlit dining room of the mixed-race, best-selling author (multiple use of hyphens not intended) of The Book of Negroes, when a sense of uncanny serendipity fell upon me.	Posted: May 31st, 2009 @ 01:13 PM Ian Daffern Whazamo! Profiles: Eric Kim Name: Eric Kim Hometown: Toronto Website: http://www.inkskratch.com Role: Comic artist, illustrator, co-creator, aspiring creator Latest Work: Most recent was The Sidesteppers for Owl Magazine.
Posted: Jun 18th, 2009 @ 09:09 AM Nitin Deckha The benefits of literary festivals: A critique of Kriti I had the opportunity to partake on a multiple levels at the 2009 Desilit Kriti festival of South Asian literature and arts in Chicago last weekend (June 11-14) http://www.desilit.org/kriti.php.	Posted: Nov 2nd, 2011 @ 10:10 AM Farzana Doctor Canadian Bookshelf Interview: an adventure in Trinity-Bellwoods Park I recently had the wonderful good luck to spend a late-summer afternoon with Julie Wilson, from Canadian Bookshelf.	Posted: Oct 6th, 2008 @ 11:11 AM Chris Eaton Something I found funny today Reinforcing how Nitin has started his month of residency here with a much more intellectual approach than my own, I felt strangely compelled to return for at least one more blog just to post this link to a skit on Saturday Night L
Posted: Mar 31st, 2008 @ 04:16 PM Deborah Ellis last entry This will be my last entry for the Writer in Residence blog. It's been a good experience and I'm very lucky to have had this forum.	Posted: May 12th, 2009 @ 06:18 PM Clayton Hanmer CTON does TCAF This past weekend was the comic event of the year in Toronto in terms of the type of comics I prefer.	Posted: Jul 28th, 2011 @ 08:08 AM Amy Lavender Harris Doug Ford's reading List Ever since Toronto Councillor and Mayoral advisor Doug Ford's humiliating revelation of the seemingly boundless extent of his illiteracy, the city has resonated with condemnation and ridicule.
Posted: May 28th, 2008 @ 09:09 AM Alexander Herman, Paul Matthews and Andrew Feindel On Copyright In an op-ed in the Books section of last weekend's Globe and Mail, John Degen, the head of the Professional Writers Association, argued that the panic over copyright in Canada is a false one.	Posted: Apr 29th, 2011 @ 08:08 AM Angela Hibbs "ducks, cottonwood trees, soap opera ladies, storms and lost yelps" in conversation with Winterkill author, Catherine Graham Catherine Graham is the author of four acclaimed poetry collections: The Watch and the poetry trilogy Pupa, The Red Element and Winterkill http://www.insomniacpress.com/title.php?id=978-1-897415-32-0 Vice President of Project Boo	Posted: Nov 26th, 2009 @ 10:22 PM Dalton Higgins Sleeping With The Enemy In one of Spike Lee's most enduring films, Do The Right Thing, one of the questions at the end of the film is whether Mookie 'does the right thing' when he throws the garbage can through the window, because he feels
Posted: Dec 29th, 2007 @ 03:15 PM Anne Hines Starts and Stops ( In which popping the cork leads me to reflect on kicking the can) We’re counting down the days until New Year’s Eve. Soon the whole world will be celebrating, making merry and dancing in the streets.	Posted: Feb 9th, 2012 @ 02:14 PM Ava Homa On Crafting a Piece of Fiction (2): Characterization How to Create Characters who Breathe on the Page? When readers don’t sympathize with the characters, they lose interest in following the story.	Posted: Feb 11th, 2012 @ 07:07 AM P.S. Jevanael Toronto Publishing House Tour Round 1 Yesterday, Friday, I went off tripping to Toronto to tour the publishing houses, armed with some presentation material and some leave-behind packages.
Posted: Jan 20th, 2010 @ 02:14 PM Amy Jones Favourite Short Stories It's super rare that I ever feel like writing about writing instead of actually writing (yeah, that's a lot of writings).	Posted: Dec 31st, 2008 @ 09:09 AM Kathy Kacer Saying good-bye! Time to sign off, folks. I must say, I’ve loved every minute of this gig – enjoyed the opportunity to share thoughts and ideas about the writing world, particularly from the Y.A. perspective.	Posted: Nov 15th, 2009 @ 11:23 PM Welwyn Wilton Katz Battle of the Blades Just voted my possible ten times for Battle of the Blades. I couldn't vote for just one pair.
Posted: Jul 7th, 2009 @ 11:11 AM Lauren Kirshner Q & A with Poet Michael Lista A few days ago I met poet Michael Lista at the Cafe Diplomatico on College Street, where we talked, among other things, about Canadian poetry, Bloom, his soon-to-be-published debut from The House of Anansi Press, and a preview of	Posted: Oct 17th, 2010 @ 08:08 AM Pj Kwong A Book Launch Tale - Taking The Ice - Success Stories from the World of Canadian Figure Skating Well...although it was 2 weeks ago, it feels like the launch was just yesterday for my first book Taking the Ice - Success Stories from The World of Canadian Figure Skating. (www.takingtheice.com)	Posted: Mar 25th, 2011 @ 09:09 AM Jeff Latosik Entry 7: James Langer and Joshua Trotter Joshua Trotter Books: All This Could Be Yours (Biblioasis, 2010) Cred: Widespread publication.
Posted: Jan 30th, 2009 @ 12:12 PM Dennis McCloskey Everyday Heroes By Dennis McCloskey In a discussion of the concept of heroism, the late U.S. President, Ronald Reagan, said he had read a report that indicated John Wayne was the last American hero.	Posted: Sep 30th, 2009 @ 12:12 PM Jacob McArthur Mooney Last Post: Good Things in October Whereas today is the last day of September, it also marks the end of our time together. Sad, I know. All good things and whatnot.	Posted: May 30th, 2009 @ 10:22 PM Pamela Mordecai Walk good If you had asked me I’d have said that when the time had come for me to say au revoir officially by then it would be warm and we would be outside in shorts and T’s. But it ain’t so. Of course each year there are the us
Posted: Feb 17th, 2011 @ 06:18 PM John Moss honour/able I do not often sign petitions and I am not a member of the Liberal Party but I just signed the Liberal call for the resignation of Bev Oda, for her dispicable behavior which demeans the position of cabinet minister and demeans us	Posted: Feb 6th, 2012 @ 11:11 AM George Murray The Questionless Books Interview: Writer and Musician Robert Priest In The Questionless Books Interview, I get a whole bunch of books people (from authors to editors to publishers to sales / publicity / production people, booksellers, designers, librarians, readers, etc) to "answer" a se	Posted: Mar 31st, 2009 @ 09:21 PM Sheree-Lee Olson ‘IN FINLAND, LIBRARIES ARE HOLY PLACES’ It’s spring, and I am not thinking of Paris, or New York, or Barcelona. I am longing for Turku. Turku is Finland’s southern port city, across the Baltic from Stockholm.
Posted: Nov 22nd, 2011 @ 08:08 AM John Oughton Poetry, Memes and John Pike Most people with a Facebook account or one eye on the Internet have by now seen the infamous and viral-in-nothing-flat video of campus police "officer" Lt.	Posted: Oct 31st, 2011 @ 07:07 AM Dorothy Ellen Palmer The Last Post It’s hard to believe that the entire month of October has gone by and this is my last post as Open Book Writer in Residence!	Posted: Feb 4th, 2012 @ 04:04 AM Basil Papademos Things Were Looking Up I know I can go kind of nuts once in a while but I've got a psych file thicker than a Greater Toronto phone book.
Posted: Dec 24th, 2009 @ 09:21 PM Marianne Paul Looking for the Miraculous I haven’t seen an angel in a water spot on my ceiling, or the Virgin Mary in the shape of a potato, or the face of Jesus on a scorch mark on the bottom of my iron, or the Son of God in the lines and wrinkles of a cinnamon bun.	Posted: Oct 31st, 2010 @ 10:22 PM Shane Peacock The Best Job Ever During Q&As, I'm often asked why I became a writer. My favourite answer is that I did it because I didn't want to have a job.	Posted: May 2nd, 2011 @ 11:11 AM Alessandro Porco The Art of Infidelity: An Interview with Mike Spry The Art of Infidelity: An Interview with Mike Spry Mike Spry is the author of JACK, which was shortlisted for the 2009 Quebec Writers' Federation A.M.
Posted: Feb 4th, 2011 @ 05:05 AM Kate Pullinger First Person Narrators I’m currently reading ‘Lemon’ by Cordelia Strube (Coach House Books) and this has lead me to think about the perils and pleasures of first person narratives.	Posted: Jan 31st, 2008 @ 08:08 AM Corey Redekop Is this the end? Yup. My tenure as January's Writer-in-Residence has come to its inevitable conclusion. A friend suggested that I end on something controversial to get people talking, but that's not me.	Posted: Jun 10th, 2009 @ 11:23 PM Linda Rogers REVENGE OF THE NERD The nerd wore his pants up around his armpits and he tucked his polyester shirt into his underpants. He combed his hair with his mother's spit. He could add six columns but he didn't count. He wrote bad poems th
Posted: Oct 31st, 2009 @ 08:20 PM Damian Rogers Dance of the Last Shaker: A Short Film Well, this is my last post and I wanted to use it to highlight the short film my friends Rebecca Mendoza and Chris Murphy made using two of my poems.	Posted: Dec 24th, 2010 @ 05:17 PM Jeffrey Round IMAGINING PEACE In David Bergen’s Giller Prize-nominated The Matter With Morris, from HarperCollins, a man named Morris Schutt is having a hard time holding on to reality. At the heart of it lies the death of Morris’s son in Afghanistan.	Posted: Jul 11th, 2009 @ 10:10 AM Michael Rubenfeld Dear Michael's Blog Dear Blog, How are you? I've missed you. Thing have been pretty good since we last spoke. I've been a part of three different plays, all that I'd written.
Posted: Jun 1st, 2011 @ 01:13 PM Devyani Saltzman The New Yorker at Luminato As part of Luminato 2011, we’re excited to partner with The New Yorker on a series of literary events over two days of the festival. As the Middle East enters a new chapter, David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, will lead a	Posted: Aug 31st, 2008 @ 07:19 PM John Scully Eight is Enuff!! Cottagers and tourists can take a hike, not into nearby Algonquin Park where terrorists disguised as bears and moose will surely lurk, but back to their homes in the city.	Posted: Dec 31st, 2009 @ 12:12 PM Karen Shenfeld Canoeing Song I go canoeing with Pauline Johnson. I take the bow; she, the stern. Port/starboard; stroke on stroke— we paddle in unison; our liquid song: wings dipped in silvered glass.
Posted: Jan 31st, 2010 @ 09:21 PM Emil Sher A Loss for Words Sometimes, a passing comment sticks like a burr. Recently, I bumped into Ralph and his dog as I was walking mine. Ralph’s son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter had visited from out of town.	Posted: Feb 12th, 2012 @ 12:00 AM Shaun Smith SHAUN SMITH'S SUNDAY SUNDRIES A WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF INTERNET CURIOSITIES FROM THE BOOK WORLD Want to date a (Canadian) writer?	Posted: Jul 30th, 2008 @ 07:19 PM Beverley Stone THE WALLFLOWER CONFESSIONS 16. The Secret to Living the Writing Life (and no, its not booze) I think, based on my limited experience to date, that the secret is patience -- many levels of patience.
Posted: Jul 29th, 2011 @ 06:06 AM Fraser Sutherland CREATIVITY, QUALITY & TASTE Speaking as someone who has no imagination, I’m always annoyed to hear people natter on about “creativity.” If you’re a writer, creativity is a given. If you’re not a writer, you natter on about it all the time.	Posted: Mar 30th, 2010 @ 05:17 PM Paul Vermeersch A Parting Thought from Our March Writer-In-Residence: Toronto Is a Vibrant Literary City. Become a Part of It! Dear Toronto Book Lovers, It's been a pleasure blogging for you all here at Open Book Toronto. Thanks to OBT, I've had the chance to be political, nostalgic, optimistic and perhaps even (time will tell) prophetic.	Posted: Jan 15th, 2012 @ 01:13 PM Thom Vernon 2012 with a Bang! 2012 is starting out with a bang! As I have moved from the active promotion of The Drifts book, I am in rehearsal and pre-production for a staged version of excerpts from the book.
Posted: Jun 29th, 2011 @ 12:12 PM Jessica Westhead Deer in the Bloglights No More! Blogging is hard! Before Open Book Toronto so kindly asked me aboard, I had very limited blogging experience, having written exactly two posts for other people’s online homes (one on notebook love, for Rebecca Rosenblum, and th	Posted: Jan 5th, 2012 @ 06:18 PM Robert Paul Weston The Mysteries of Radio Back in fall, my book Dust City was nominated for the 2012 Red Maple Award, part of Ontario's Forest of Reading Program.	Posted: Jun 26th, 2008 @ 06:18 PM Nathan Whitlock Open and Close And so ends my reign as Open Book's Writer in Residence. Many thanks to Amy Logan Holmes and Clelia Scala and the whole OB:T empire for allowing me to hang around here for the month.
Posted: Oct 30th, 2007 @ 10:22 PM Zoe Whittall Zoe T. Leroy interviews Maureen Medved, author of The Tracey Fragments In 1999, my fabulous then-roomie, Mariko, recommended I read a slim blue book about an impetuous teen named Tracey.	Posted: Dec 28th, 2011 @ 04:16 PM Liz Worth Touring, Part Two: What to do, what to bring When I posted the first part of this topic, I didn’t expect there to be such a gap in time between part one and part two. But what’s my excuse? I was busy with readings and book fairs in and out of town.