Writer • Editor • Educator
Join us for an evening of discussion and readings from the new book A Family by Any Other Name: Exploring Queer Relationships, with editor Bruce Gillespie and local contributors Jason Dale and Ellen Russell. At no other time in history have lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender relationships and families been more visible or numerous. A…
The shortlist for the 2014 Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction was just announced by Wilfrid Laurier University. The three nominees are (in alphabetical order): Arno Kopecky for The Oil Man and the Sea, Allen Smutylo for The Memory of Water and Alison Wearing for Confessions of a Fairy’s Daughter. You can find out more…
With the publication of Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard’s multi-volume diary, My Struggle, in English this spring, there have been lots of pieces written about the value of reading long, challenging books, including this one by the Globe’s Ian Brown. Knausgaard’s diaries don’t particularly interest me as pleasure reading, but the stories about them set…
I came across this wonderful quotation in Tracy Kidder’s book Among Schoolchildren, about the year he spent in a Grade 5 classroom in Holyoke, Massachusetts (which I’m auditioning for the literary journalism course I’ll be teaching this winter): Many people find it easy to imagine unseen webs of malevolent conspiracy in the world, and they…
Every year, I end up with at least one important book that I think everyone should read. Want to find out my pick for this year? Check out my review in the July edition of The Recommend on 49th Shelf.