Online Exclusives
Natalia Zdaniuk’s Writing Space
I write well on the plane. There are the practical reasons, ones that I’ve seen other writers point out: the benefit of few distractions, the discomfort of the narrow chair keeping you awake, the potential inspiration from unknown passengers. But for me there is also a specific emotional experience that comes from the liminality of […]
What is Ami Sands Brodoff Reading?
During the early days and months of the COVID-19 Pandemic, I found I could not read. Normally, my reading times—a bit with morning coffee, a longer swathe at teatime after I knock off my own writing, a scoach before bed—are among my favourite parts of the day and compose a ritual. Like so many of […]
What is Heather Paul Reading?
My reading life is typical of the rest of my life: always a lot going on. I usually have three to four books on the go, one of which will be an audiobook. Often the audiobooks will be nonfiction, usually in the realm of health and wellness, food and drink. Recent non-fiction reads (approximately two […]
Finding the Form with Margaret Nowaczyk
When Pamela Mulloy invited me to contribute to the Day Jobs column, I felt honored to be asked, rapidly followed by totally panicked. How to describe coherently and literarily what I have been doing for quarter of a century? Then I remembered an essay that I had been writing for almost five years. Its first […]
What is Kirsteen MacLeod Reading?
My new book, In Praise of Retreat, will be out at the end of March—so I’ve recently transitioned to ‘having written.’ As a result I’ve been in ‘kid in a candy store’ mode, deliriously reading works not related to my own book for the first time in ages, in all genres. I just finished reading […]
Finding the Form with Nicole Baute
When I was seven or eight years old, I was unreasonably worried about losing one of my parents. Instead of sleeping I would lie awake at night trying to imagine my life without them. It was particularly bad on the rare occasion they went out for dinner and left us with a babysitter. I remember […]
Finding the Form with Ian LeTourneau
Birds occasionally take centre stage in my poems and many fly through in minor roles, on their way, perhaps, to find better habitat elsewhere (in other poets’ poems?). Starlings, chickadees, pine siskins have been my subjects; crows, pileated woodpeckers, red winged blackbirds, to name just a few, have flapped or soared through my poems. I […]
Heather Paul’s Writing Space
For those of you who haven’t studied women’s literature, Virginia Woolf wrote a book called a Room of One’s Own, the premise of which noted that women are largely absent from literary cannons because they were not deemed worthy of education and were usually stuck cooking, cleaning, knitting or caring for someone instead of being […]
Angeline Schellenberg’s Writing Space
My requirements for a productive writing space are simple: sunshine, silence, and a dog. In summer, I write outdoors whenever possible. This past summer, our neighbour from across the street built us a patio on the east side of our house under our apple trees. He took his time, partly because he’s a perfectionist, and […]
Finding the Form with Mary-Lynn Murphy
I wasn’t working on a specific project at the time I wrote “Recalculating” and had no ideas in mind, so I approached the page with a familiar mixture of anticipation and hopelessness. I often begin by putting something—anything—on the page, sometimes just what I see out the window. Something to get the pen moving. The […]