All is good on the writing front. I am very busy having fun writing and making good progress on my fiction and non-fiction manuscripts, and I will post details later as you may have an interest in contributing and I’d love to interview any of my blog readers who are interested in participating (particularly the [...]

Spur Festival will be holding a panel on Saturday April 13, 2013 at OISE Auditorium on the topic of whether Canadian labeling dooms our cultural creators to failure. Joy of all joys, my essay arguing that the Canadian label builds culture at the expense of creators was selected which means that I will joining today’s [...]

Veena Gokhale, a Montrealer, is the author of Bombay Wali, a short story collection published this spring by Guernica Editions. I met Veena at Toronto’s Word on the Street literary festival in the Humber School for Writers tent in 2011 and she told me about her book in draft. We exchanged contact information, and I was [...]

The Canadian label builds society at the expense of our cultural creators. Culture may be labelled Canadian without considering where ingredients have come from or where components of a process are carried out. An international bestseller may be considered Canadian even if written by a Canadian citizen who has lived abroad since birth. A book may [...]

Sorry for the lapse in postings…this blog is quiet because I’m working on my new novel and two non-fiction books. I’ve needed some space to reflect and connect with my intentions for my writing. All I have come up with is that I like to read, learn and write and I have a vastly under-developed [...]

Here we are in 2013, after a year that just flew by. My wish for you is that this will be a year of discovery and bold creation. Having read various articles on how to make this the best year ever, I’m going to keep up with my ecclectic pursuits, all of which continue to [...]

The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan is out as of December 18, 2012. Should be good- her first, The Day The Falls Stood Still, was beautiful to read and I’m savouring the thought of reading this one over the holidays.Tomorrow is a Canadian Author’s Association event hosted by the Toronto branch-info available on their [...]

Tomorrow evening (Dec 6, 2012), I am delivering three workshops on Suspense and Storytelling at an elementary school’s literacy night event for primary students (JK to grade 3). I am thrilled to have been invited to be the “mystery guest.” I am sharing some of the background materials with you as they may be of [...]

While everyone’s been going wild for Gangnam Style, I’ve been dancing to the tune of Kanban Style. This, I hit upon when I met with Miriam Tuerk, Toronto Public Library’s former entrepreneur in residence. I met her for advice relating to some of my professional interests (organizational change and human rights training for educators) and she [...]

Deadline for submission is noon on Nov 20, 2012 and here’s how you can send your 400-500 word entry in (just check the rules–these ones say that you waive your rights to the story … which seems unusual to me). I just sent mine in, as part of my grand plan to get some fiction [...]