In honouring Clifford, I wanted to emphasize his brilliance, his philosophy, and his refusal to accept dogma.
Agony Editor: Expert advice on keeping purple prose and erotic clichés out of bedroom scenes
Writing good sex is no small feat. It’s far too easy to fall into the trap of stereotypes and clichés.
Agony Editor: There are plenty of ways to get back your reading mojo that don’t involve books
What you read isn’t as important as that you read. Writers sometimes hold certain types of reading in higher regard than others. But that limits you in a world where there’s so much good reading to be had.
Jessica Aldred on how video games like the Bioshock series have much to teach us about our past, present, and future
It has never been more crucial for game studies and game culture to revisit its “canonical” texts through the intersectional lenses of gender, sexuality, race, and class.
A queer ABC book nods to the long history of coded language in the LGBTQ community
GAYBCs: A Queer Alphabet explores the notoriously thorny subject of queer identity, delivering what is often missing from the subject: humour. Published by Greystone Books, the picture book is a play on the constantly evolving language used to define queer identity.
Agony Editor: Blaming writing-career failures on your marriage will rightfully land you in the doghouse
Being in a relationship means sharing the load. That doesn’t mean laying down your dreams to die.
Merve Emre: working on a book about the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator helped illuminate the test’s seduction
“I discovered that the more Myers-Briggs Type Indicator questions I read, the harder it became to resist answering.”
Lezlie Lowe: Why public bathrooms are actually highly politicized and exclusionary spaces
Once I started writing about public toilets (a reporting beat I fell into when my kids were small and I realized I could no longer navigate my city the way I once did), I saw bathroom deficiencies everywhere.
Tanis MacDonald: surviving as an “out-of-line” artist in a smaller community
Do you live in a major urban centre? Take this short test. You are giving a reading from your latest book at your local bookstore, and you invite a friend who lives an hour’s travel away. If your friend says instantly, “Awesome, I’ll be there,” chances are you live in a Big City. If your friend says, “What? Come all that way? On the highway?” then you probably live in a smaller city or town and belong to a group I call “out-of-line” artists.
Agony Editor: How to handle a deteriorating author/agent partnership, without burning bridges
At the end of the day, author/agent relationships can peter out for a variety of reasons, none of which may be personal.
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