Lisa Young

“ I didn’t have to challenge myself. Numerous challenges emerged on their own. ” BIOGRAPHICAL INFO: Michael Fraser has been published in numerous national and international anthologies and journals including:   Paris Atlantic ,   Arc , CV2 , and   The Caribbean Writer . He won   ARC ’s Reader’s Choice award for 2012, and was included in the Best Canadian Poetry in English 2013 . He won   FreeFall ’s  2014 and 2015 Poetry Contests. His latest book is   To Greet Yourself Arriving (Tightrope Books). He is the creator and former director of the Plasticine Poetry Series.  Michael’s second collection of poetry   To Greet Yourself Arriving   was recently published by Tightrope Books. As the title suggests, this collection explores self-awareness, fragmented selves, and the best self. Some of the poems are portraits of people who have accomplished rare achievements, such as Bob Marley, Joe Frazier, Maya Angelou and Barack Ob...

Novelist   Heather J. Wood shares the benefits of limitations... Heather J. Wood One often thinks of creativity in terms of the blank canvas or the blank page—i.e. the freedom to be able to write about anything one's imagination can conjure up. Some writers chafe at the thought of restrictions. Yet, having set limitations can also be an immense source of creativity. For myself, at least, boundaries have allowed me to go in unexpected directions. I would not have imagined myself writing a teen-oriented novel involving roller derby. In fact, I would have thought the idea was ludicrous a few years ago. Yet when I was offered the opportunity to write "something about roller derby", which eventually turned into my recent book, Roll With It , I was given a wonderful creative gift. The project turned out to a liberating rather than a restricting experience. For one thing, I wasn’t worried about being "literary", so I felt free to write more naturally a...