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Poet and scholar Tanis MacDonald has taught creative writing for twenty years all across Canada: in small community workshops, large university classes and everything in between. The question she's heard the most is "How can I be a writer?" and she realized early on that this ... Read more
Poet and scholar Tanis MacDonald has taught creative writing for twenty years all across Canada: in small community workshops, large university classes and everything in between. The question she's heard the most is "How can I be a writer?" and she realized early on that this question had nothing to do with putting words on a page. Out of Line is her answer to this question. This book is about creativity and community, about what it is like to try and pick up a pen, or a paintbrush, and create art for the first time when you don't come from a background with access to the arts. In this wide-ranging work, MacDonald looks at our societal preconceptions about the artist lifestyle and examines how real artists fit into the everyday world. Along the way she walks the reader through the steps that must be taken for an idea to make it from a concept to a finished piece and what happens once the work is out in the world. But Out of Line also tackles how issues such as class and the rural-urban divide can structure our interactions with the arts. MacDonald examines the experiences artists have, whether beginners or established, in finding a community to support them and celebrate their work outside of the major urban centres where the industry has traditionally been clustered. In the end, Out of Line works to open up the arts to everyone who might dream of creating.
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I came into Canada from the U.S. for the first time on a student visa without complications, just the mild ugh of paperwork and a typical wait on bureaucracy. I had an easy immigration as a white, English-speaking, cis-gendered, able-bodied, straight woman with neither dependents ... Read more
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Looking for a way to engage your young’uns with reading and storytelling? Story stones may be the answer: a simple, afternoon craft that will help your kids comprehend the stories they’re reading. Better still, they can continue the story on their own well after the book’s ... Read more
About a year after I moved to Toronto, I re-read a couple Atwood novels: Cat’s Eye and Robber Bride. It would be a couple years yet until I’d see the sort of house Charis owned on Toronto Island in Robber Bride, but I understood what it meant to get “off at St. George ... Read more
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