amwriting

Interview with Roselle Lim and Giveaway for Natalie Tan’s Book of Luck and Fortune

Saturday, May 25, 2019
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I could not be more thrilled to be hosting author Roselle Lim this week on the Ball! I’ve been waiting many months for her magical debut, Natalie Tan’s Book of Luck and Fortune, to come out, and now it’s almost here! Roselle Lim was born in the Philippines and immigrated to Canada as a child. She lived in north Scarborough in a diverse, Asian neighbourhood. She found her love of…

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Attacus Atlas & Other Inventions: Study, Steady

Tuesday, May 21, 2019
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This week’s topic: “MFA vs NYC vs Choose Your Own Adventure.” Aloha. What if my writing education has been all three? I confess I’m a bit of a professional student. I love to be in a class, I love to have homework and get direction. The underlying motivation all throughout my writing life has been my desire to find community and gain skills, to chip away at a steady pace….

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A Writer at Any Age

    Because my release day fell on my birthday, I’ve already written a little about writing and age. One of the best things about writing, I believe, is that you can do it at any age. It belongs to you at any age. As long as you want to put words on paper, you can, although how you approach it might change. How it affects you, and what it…

Friday, May 17, 2019
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Attacus Atlas & Other Inventions: Writing Time

Aloha. I started writing poetry when I was nine years old. I remember writing in bursts. I had a wonderful teacher that year, and she was encouraging us to write beyond what the class assignments required us to do for the poetry unit. I first learned about haiku and sonnets and I was hooked! I wrote anywhere and anytime, and on any surface — from napkins to spiral notebooks. By…

Tuesday, May 14, 2019
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Little Egg and Big Egg

Friday, May 10, 2019
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      There aren’t a lot of Easter eggs in The Dream Peddler, but I can think of a couple of things that most readers wouldn’t pick up on—they’re just there for me, or for anyone who happens to have the specific knowledge you would require to get my meaning. The first is a small thing having to do with naming. I had a really hard time getting through…

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Maybe You CAN Take the City out of the Girl

Friday, May 3, 2019
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  I’ve lived in a number of different places across Canada and the United States, and I think to some extent I’ve absorbed something from each of them that colors my writing in some way, but I honestly never gave much thought to that until I sat down to write this post. The first thing that seems to influence me is being Canadian. I have a penchant for describing long,…

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Attacus Atlas & Other Inventions: Indie Love

Tuesday, April 23, 2019
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Aloha. K.A. Doore wrote an essay yesterday about the reader’s buying power and how the support of an independent bookstore helps save jobs and sustain a vibrant literary community. I have nothing to add to her excellent work – she said it so eloquently. I want to say that I’m so deeply grateful I have the love and support of Counterpoint Press. This amazing independent press was brave to embrace…

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Interview with Kirstin Chen and Giveaway for BURY WHAT WE CANNOT TAKE

Saturday, April 20, 2019
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  I could not be more thrilled to welcome this week’s guest, Kirstin Chen, to the debutante ball! Kirstin Chen’s second novel, Bury What We Cannot Take, was named a best book of the year by Entropy, Popsugar, and Book Bub, and a top pick of the season by Electric Literature, The Millions, The Rumpus, Harper’s Bazaar, and InStyle. She is also the author of Soy Sauce for Beginners. She has received awards from the Steinbeck Fellows Program, Sewanee, Hedgebrook, the…

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Writing Finances

Friday, April 19, 2019
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      I am not a finance person. When I think of the words “financial” and “realities” in the same sentence, my brain tries to make a little symbolic dive under a sofa. All I can do with this post is just lay it out there and be honest. I have no problem telling everyone exactly what my book finances have been so far, because I think it’s important…

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Attacus Atlas & Other Inventions: on money and madness

Tuesday, April 16, 2019
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Aloha: It’s tax season and this is a perfect time to remember that unless your last name is GRISHAM or KING, it is difficult to make a living writing books. Don’t let it deter you: creating a writing life is a noble calling, it just doesn’t pay well for the aspiring or newbie writers. It doesn’t pay well for poets. You should know that it’s madness in a way, to…

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