Have a Book You Want to Write? This Program is for You…
I’m a mentor-advisor in the University of King’s College/Dalhousie University’s Creative Nonfiction MFA program (the only one of its kind in Canada). Our students are professionals (of various kinds, not only journalists) working on book projects. It’s low-residency, so students come to Halifax for 2 weeks in August (and, in alternating years, Toronto or New […]
Miss Friday, the Tin Toy Typist
A 1950s Japanese novelty by Nomura Toys Ltd.: the battery-operated “Miss Friday the Typist.” Sitting at an 8.5-inch tinplate desk (with extensions raised), “Miss Friday” is 7-inches high from floor to the top of her head (in sitting position). Considered a complex action toy (featuring two or more actions, rather than just one), she moves her […]
BECOME A BETTER FEATURE WRITER
My Advanced Feature Writing night course is scheduled to run at Ryerson University beginning on Thursday, January 15, 2015. It’s part of the Magazine & Web Publishing program in The G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education. The class is usually small—often a dozen or so students—and more than half of the people who take the course […]
In Memory of Don Obe
Sadly, the legendary editor, writer and teacher, Don Obe, has died today at Toronto General Hospital after a period of declining health. His long career included newspaper work at The Windsor Star, Vancouver Sun and Toronto Telegram. Inspired by the New Journalism of Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Hunter Thompson and others, he jumped to magazines, first as […]
The Art of Nonfiction on the Bridge
“Chrissake, Joe, let’s get the bolts out and put that mother on,” one pusher yelled to Joe Jacklets, who was being cautious with the casting. The pusher, noticing that another gang working down the catwalk had already removed the bolts and were clamping the casting into place, was getting nervous–his gang was behind. “Take it […]
Rereading A Depression Classic
I recently reread Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, the best known part of a book by novelist James Agee and photographer Walker Evans, published in 1941 under the title: Cotton Tenants: Three Families. It began as a magazine article—commissioned by Fortune in 1936—that went rogue. Agee and Evans were sent to document the lives of […]
Susan Orlean on Writing, Ideas and Storytelling
“I write about stories because I want to learn about them. In the process of learning you would really hope that what you learn throws you off from where you started… I start w a question, whatever it may be, and the more I learn, the more I realize, wow, that wasn’t the question at all. […]
Copyright is Monkey Business
As writers, we worry about our work being reproduced without our consent. We Google ourselves to find out whether a publication or industry association or corporation newsletter is running one of our articles without contacting us and inquiring about a fee. Well, that challenge seems simple compared to the case of the professional photographer and an endangered […]
Kevin Sessums and the Celebrity Profile
Many of my friends don’t share my view that the so-often-maligned celebrity profile can be gloriously fun to read as well as well-researched and written. (Although granted there are so many poor examples that the skepticism is understandable.) Some of you may have read Rex Reed’s 1967 profile of Ava Gardner? (It earned inclusion in Tom […]
Become a Better Feature Writer
My Advanced Feature Writing night course is scheduled to run at Ryerson University this fall. It’s part of the Magazine & Web Publishing program in The G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education. The class is usually small — often 12 to 15 students — and more than half of the people who take the […]