Through the summer, I read the 1966 classic novel Jubilee by Mississippi writer Margaret Walker (1915-1998). I chose it because I love the idea of having one novel in my stacks that stretches out for the whole summer. Inspired by the life of her great-grandmother, Walker takes readers across
In a 1990 interview* MA talks about writing The Edible Woman in a chaotic Vancouver apartment: papers strewn everywhere, piles only she could decipher, and very little furniture (including a card table loaned by Jane Rule). Not how you’d imagine writers working (chair, desk), she says. It was a
When I requested Dear Writer, Dear Actress, a collection of letters exchanged between Anton Chekov and Olga Knipper, I expected them to arrive when Bill and Bron and I were reading “Gooseberries”. (Our project page is here.) If they had, my note-taking would have revolved around connections with their friendship and
There is just one more story left in our project—and it’s the shortest, only six pages, the second by Tolstoy. In the course of looking for a cover image, I learned that it was published after Tolstoy’s death, and that it was based on a real person. (Inadvertently, I
After I finally managed to finish the Toronto Public Library’s reading challenge last year, after so many years of leaving it half-done, some of you asked if I was planning to do the new challenge. Not likely, I said. But then the 2025 challenge was in the form of
