Hard to believe perhaps but the author of Red Is Best — who thinks she knows a few things about taking pictures — learned only just last spring that there is a “Red Rule” of photography, which is quite simply: Looking at my Instagram posts, I was surprised how few contained red before I started a “Capture…

A Tulip In Winter sits alongside several other wonderful books on the CCBC’s Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award shortlist and I’m delighted. I’m told it deserves to win. Of course, all the other titles do too! I learned some fascinating things while conducting my research for the book, but sometimes what we learn leads to…

Today I’m on my way to Saskatchewan to participate in a Sage Hill Poetry Colloquium. Anticipating my departure, I recalled several poetry landmark moments in my life, leading up to this one. As a child I loved Lewis Carroll’s “You Are Old Father William” so much I memorized it with no one telling me to…

What a treat it was to see so many people at CANSCAIP’s 40th Packaging Your Imagination conference recently — people I hadn’t seen since before the pandemic. Other writers, illustrators, old friends, and new faces too. PYI is always a wonderful mix of all of the above. But five people present were an especially wonderful…

You slogged through several drafts of your project, probably many drafts. You worked with feedback from trusted colleagues in exchange for feedback on their work, or from a hired editor, to help you get your project to a publishable state. Not only publishable; this book is going to be great! you told yourself. You experienced highs and lows…

For this year’s “I Read Canadian” Day (that’s today), I decided to list books by Canadian authors I’ve read in the past year. And — to adopt a phrase used by the cheesiest of stories online — you won’t believe what I discovered! More than half of the 100 books I read were Canadian! Here are some favourites: Canadian Fiction Butter…

Like many Canadians, I’m horrified and saddened by stories that continue to come out about the mistreatment, past and present day, of Indigenous people in this country. So I’m pleased to know that starting tomorrow, we will be honouring the lost children and survivors of residential schools, their families, and communities with a National Day…

When I’m not juggling writing, editing, and time with my family, one of my favourite pastimes at this time of year is gardening. Gardening is a lot like writing. How? When you make a change to solve one problem, it often creates a new problem to solve. You often have to yank out and discard…

“Spectacular!” “Inspiring!” Two words people used to describe my keynote speech at CANSCAIP’s Packaging Your Imagination conference last month. Pretty gratifying feedback! You missed it? Fear not! I’m going to post the whole speech here at “Turning the Pages.” “Sock Fluff” was my introduction to Loris Lesynski, back in the early 90s, before it was…

Hearty thanks to the over 100 people who tuned in to hear multiple perspectives on this picture book biography last week. Editor Bev Brenna interviewed me, illustrator François Thisdale, the book’s subject Anne Innis Dagg, and Anne’s daughter Mary. We got brief perspectives from cohosts Fitzhenry & Whiteside and The Bookshelf too. Watch the recording…

New editions — Korean and Portuguese coming soon too. But that’s not all that’s been happening with this book lately.     The National Arts Centre has big plans. The multi-talented composer Anne Dudley has been laying the groundwork for a musical treatment of the book — for orchestra, solo violin, and narrator. Normal –…

There’s nothing quite like having a reviewer as highly respected as Dana Rudolph, founder of Mombian (a blog, resource directory, and book database for lesbian moms and other LGBTQ parents), totally get and appreciate all the decisions made during the course of creating one’s book. When Annick Press and I decided to update The Bare…