Please note: this event has been cancelled. We welcome you to join us for the official award ceremonies in Waterloo on Nov. 3 instead. One of the highlights of my year is hosting an event in Brantford with the winner of the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction. This year,…
Category: Literary journalism

Edna Staebler and the Lives of Women
For the past year or so, a lot of my research time has been focused on the magazine writing Edna Staebler did early in her career, mostly for Maclean’s and Chatelaine. As I’ve written before, it’s great stuff with a timeless quality to it; the stories are every bit as…

Edna Staebler, literary journalist
I’m pleased to share some research I’ve been working on for the past couple of years about Edna Staebler’s legacy as a pioneering female literary journalist in Canada. Most Canadians who know of Staebler probably think of her as a cookbook writer or philanthropist–and rightly so. That’s how I used…
Shortlist announced for 2014 Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction
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….
Food for thought
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…