Deadline extended to September 30th!We’re looking for stories on the theme of My Big Mistake. Tell us about the screw-ups, snafus, and blunders that changed your life: the boyfriend you broke up with who was really "the One," the friendship test you got completely wrong, or the time you misplaced the decimal point with catastrophic consequences.
Read MoreI have always felt a deep kinship with Ferdinand. Not only because my mother was born and raised in Madrid, but also because, if I dare say, I’m the kind of introspective guy who prefers to sit quietly and smell the flowers instead of running around and butting heads with others. Ferdinand embodies pacifism and unembarrassed self-acceptance. If I weren’t so busy taming my own wild wee broncos, I could pore over the book’s striking black and white illustrations for hours.
Read MoreMemory is one of the most powerful tools any artist or creative person has in her arsenal. As in physics, so in literature: one cannot create something from nothing. Creativity is the combining of bits and pieces of memory in a unique way. The way you’ve made that character walk is because, whether you consciously remember it or not, you once saw somebody or something move that way.
Read MoreEssentially, SocialBook, as [Bob Stein] calls it, will be a website that allows publishers, readers and writers to upload books, new and old, so they can be read and discussed interactively. The book will appear on one side of the screen with a commentary panel on the other side. The uploads will be subject to copyright restrictions and the site will be curated in order to maintain quality. You might think of it as a giant book club, with potential for all kinds of adjunct activities.
Read MoreTo me, the longstanding appeal of fiction has always been to escape my limited worldview and enter that of somebody else. Now, I don’t read stories by women to find out what women are like. There’s real life for that. I read stories by women for the same reason I read stories by men. When I say I love the stories of Mavis Gallant, I don’t say so because she is a woman. I say it because she is a great writer, full stop.
Read More1. The First Kiss Dear Diary: Today I got my first kiss but it was pretty boring.Teresa dared Jason to kiss me on the lips. Dorito breath Jason!!! I took out my gum and faced him and kept my mouth closed and he puckered his lips really tight and closed his eyes. It was quick and didn’t feel like anything. After he pulled away I put my gum back in my mouth and Teresa and everyone burst out laughing and yelled “DRYYY!!!” Jason looked embarrassed. I just wasn't done with my gum.
Read MoreCompetition judge Don Sedgwick had this to say about the winning essay "On Good Days":"It is an exquisitely structured lyrical essay/personal memoir. The language is beautiful, especially in the way it moves easily from English to French and back again. The images are bold and memorable. The metaphors are clever. And the emotional strength of the prose is consistent from beginning to end."
Read MoreI love my kids, which is a deep, vast, and ridiculous understatement. But they're humans, and as it turns out, so am I. We tend to quote Shakespeare on a daily basis, often without knowing it. I say things like: budge an inch, tower of strength, making a virtue of necessity, early days, a fool's paradise, knitting my brows, my own flesh and blood, and my favourite, slept not one wink. Thank you, Will, for this fine vocabulary of motherhood, which includes not one expletive.
Read MoreThis year marks the tenth anniversary of The Doug Wright Awards For Canadian Cartooning, and they’re calling on you to help celebrate! Earlier this month we were super excited to learn that our comics editor, Georgia Webber, had been nominated for her series Dumb. We are happy to report that she'll be among the artists contributing to a special commemorative zine to mark the occasion, but not without your help.
Read MoreThe schmoozing was great, as it had been in Montreal. But more than that, we gloried in finding one another. Most of us had been working in silos, with no peers or mentors. Imagine the thrill of finding ourselves among “our peeps” for the first time, with hours and hours for in-depth discussion of what we do and how we do it. Imagine the relief of finally getting answers to those pesky questions we’d carried around for years; the pleasure of providing helpful suggestions to our less experienced colleagues. Every item on the agenda was apt. Every contact made promised concrete mutual benefits.
Read Morecarte blanche and the Creative Nonfiction Collective Society are pleased to announce the shortlist for our inaugural creative nonfiction competition.The winner of the competition will be announced on Saturday, May 3rd at the 10th Anniversary CNFC Conference in Calgary.
Read MoreSome people maintain that writing is a lonely business. In my experience, that’s not necessarily true. When I sit down to write, I am joined by a crowd of internal negative voices: the infernal censor, the cranky critic, and the whiner who keeps reminding me of all the other things I could or should be doing.
Read MoreNo list about audio storytelling would be legit without This American Life. These are the masters and I can’t imagine a person who could listen and not be enchanted. I might not be able to be friends with that person. Ira Glass, an early adopter of hipster eyeglasses makes vocal ticks like hesitating feel sexy. Early contributors like Sarah Vowell and Starlee Kine set the tone for the smart, introspective, funny tone of the show and really changed the way we think of radio with their atypical radio voices.
Read MoreLanguage pulls us along and we swim with the current or against it or diagonally. It's bigger than any of us and has a lot to do with how we think of ourselves, how the young women in Elizabeth House think of themselves and their children. Think of the words in the mouths of powerful people in your own life that have changed you, maybe a little, maybe for a lifetime: Good, Bad, Lazy, Yes, Stupid, Pretty, Fat, Brilliant, Lovely, Never, No, Wonderful.
Read MoreSorry, everyone else, but when Canadians apologize to you it’s not an expression of deference. Unlike “eh”, which means to Canadians what it means to everyone else—it’s an invitation to polite disagreement, the opposite of the British “don’t they?” or “aren’t they?”—the Canadian “sorry” means something more like “Ah jeez, I’ve got to deal with this idiot?” (Say it in a Fargo accent to get the full effect.)
Read MoreI was at a friend’s house and we were talking about death and the statistical probability of heaven, all that deep stuff you talk about over tea on a cold winter’s day. I was thinking about all those viewings I had been to in my lifetime, how the faces of people in their coffins never quite look like they are just asleep. I couldn’t for the life of me fathom what it would be like to not exist.
Read MoreDon Sedgwick has worked in the Canadian book and magazine industries for 35 years as a writer, editor, publisher, literary agent and educator. He is the Executive Director of the new MFA in Creative Nonfiction at the University of King’s College and also teaches in the university’s Master of Journalism program.
Read MoreI met up with St. Hilaire to talk about the relationship between writers and their readers. We spoke broadly on the subject: authors in relation to the general public, to friends, to publishers, and even to reviewers. We also discussed the relationship specific to her own situation as a writer of erotic fiction.
Read MoreThis year I didn't buy myself a Christmas tree. Instead I bought one for a friend who had a hard year and two kids and not a lot of time to get her own. She appreciated the thought, but time and circumstances conspired against her and the tree stayed wrapped up on the front porch until it was almost time for the trek to her family's home out of town.
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