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Another Peek at Where I Write
Last month I told you about my desk and the wall beside it. The wall behind my desk tells more stories about my life as a writer. The Painting For my first young adult novel, set in Nova Scotia, Thistledown Press hired Iris Hauser, a Saskatchewan artist to create a cover. They knew the setting was…
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A Peek at Where I Write
All around me in the room where I write are things that act as symbols for much that keeps me going when the writing gets tough: who owned my desk before me; writer-friends; illustrators whose art has perfectly extended the stories I’ve written; the determined minds and open hearts of writers and artists who’ve participated…
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Canadian Independent Bookstore Day
Saturday, April 30 is your chance to celebrate heroes of the Canadian book business, Canada’s independent sellers. Read my take on why they deserve celebrating, and I’ll then tell you what they’re doing to celebrate you, their customers. My friend says, “Books are cheaper somewhere else.” But when people buy cheaper, author royalties are correspondingly…
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“How terribly strange to be seventy”
… as Paul Simon wrote in the lyrics of “Old Friends” while still in his twenties. My birthday is this month. Friends older than I am smile or even laugh when I say how strange it feels to be on the brink of seventy. “You’re so young,” one said to me recently. I suppose in…
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More Books About Women
This International Women’s Day post picks up from last month’s post left off, and offers my reaction to a few books by women—fiction and non-fiction—that I’ve rated highly on goodreads so far this year. Pluck: A Memoir of a Newfoundland Childhood and the Raucous, Amazing Journey to Becoming a Novelist by Donna Morrissey As a longtime…
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Books About Women
When I delivered the 33rd Helen Stubbs Memorial Lecture in the fall of 2021, one of my themes was women. I started it with a reading from Saturday Walk, a book I’d read as a child, back in the 1950s. It’s about a young boy walking with his dad observing all the men at work…
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How 7 nudges led me to my new project for the new year
A number of things late this year have been nudging me in a new direction for my writing. It started in November when I decided to go through a file called “Scribblings” to see just what I’d stuffed in there over the years. “Scribblings” contained notebooks and loose pages; writing exercises I’d done with various…
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Pandemic Connections
What do these books have in common? 1. Both were signed to me personally and mailed to me from the US by their authors. 2. I value both books highly, and even moreso the connections I’ve made with their authors, whom I have never met. This would not be the case, were it not for…
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“The Reader I Was, The Writer I Am”
How could I say no? It was an honour to be asked, back in February 2019, if I would “consider speaking at the Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Books in Toronto” as the 33rd annual Helen E. Stubbs memorial lecturer in the fall of 2020. “This lecture series,” Martha Scott wrote, “is held in the…
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Beyond Orange Shirt Day
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…
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