Literary Photographer

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LP: Monument’s characters are heavy drinking, drug abusing, amoral, racist, violent, misogynist young men yet somehow the reader remains interested rather than simply repelled by the characters. Was this a challenge when writing the book?
PB: Definitely, I wanted people to be torn about cheering for Seth in particular. I wanted him to be an [...]

Margaret Atwood has a powerful essay in the Globe and Mail on the arts in Canada and Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s attitude towards art and artists. The end is especially chilling. A must read, especially with an election looming.
And now check out out John Doyle as well.

First off, let’s look at who Rob Wiersema is. You’ve been described 
as a writer, journalist and bookseller. You’re also married and a 
father. How do you balance all these roles?
Not all that well, depending on the day, to be perfectly honest.
The fact is, my job at the bookstore is full time. Writing is [...]

Jailbreaks, 99 Canadian Sonnets, edited by Zacharia Wells
LP: How did Jailbreaks come to be?
ZW: I’ve always been drawn to the sonnet and had read a few recently published international sonnet anthologies. I found them to be not quite international enough, particularly when it came to Canada. I started mentally cataloguing all the Canadian sonnets that [...]

The Seattle Post Intelligencer has a great (small but slowly, slowly growing) section online on Northwest writers that includes a range of writers from novelist Tom Robbins to cartoonist Ellen Forney. Each piece has a sample of writing as well as a video of the writer speaking on a variety of topics.
Looking through the section [...]

Thirty years after the National Conference on the Canadian Novel in Calgary picked the 100 most important works of fiction in Canada, the Globe and Mail has five experts pick their top ten Canadian novels. The 1978 Calgary conference also picked their top ten. They were:
The Stone Angel (1964) Margaret Laurence.
Fifth Business (1970) Robertson Davies.
As [...]

A is for Atwood, which is as good as any place to begin.
That’s her photograph at the top of this page. The other portraits are Peter Oliva (at left) and Wayson Choy.
I make a living as a photographer but am fascinated by the world of writing. All writing and all aspects although I probably read [...]