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What are your favourite writing books? Most writers I know went through a time in their professional development when they were reading more about writing than actually doing any writing. I look back at that stage as my cocooning — necessary and ...

Will Ferguson's Giller-Prize winning novel, 419, features Laura, an editor, as the main character. It was fun to peek inside the life of a freelance copy editor, even at a horrible moment in her life. She is a hero, of course, as ...

National Post writer Ben Kaplan's article "A Runner Hits the Wall"  grabbed me for its honesty about the writing life. Kaplan shares the harsh criticism, "awful on all levels," he received years ago from a failed screenplay, and then his more recent ...

I believe that my last story on my May trip to visit South Sudan refugee camps has been published. But I'm sure that trip will continue to feed my writing in the days ahead. I recently thumbed through my notes from the trip, captured ...

Yesterday I picked up Alice Munro's latest novel Dear Life. This summer I reread Lives of Girls and Women and remembered why I love Munro's writing so very much. She is one of the very few authors I will re-read. The other ...

It was a picture of the log that I really wanted, stretching away from me toward the water. Then, Dewey my dog leaped up on it and his legs filled my viewfinder, like a muppet on the run. That was the picture. ...

Read this article for the United Church Observer, about refugee camps in South Sudan, based on my May 2012 visit. Click here for article. "Rim Badal, 15, stands outside the registration centre of the Doro refugee camp in the Maban district of ...

Most writers would have paid strict attention this past week — and maybe woke up sweaty and trembling from nightmares — as events unfolded at The Globe and Mail. Columnist Margaret Wente was accused of plagiarism in a 2009 column and has been disciplined ...

Years ago, we made a batch of African Peanut Soup and served it up to our dinner guests, a young couple we were trying to fix up. We all heroically made our way through the muddy brown gunk in our bowls. We all ...

Click here to read my profile of Operation Migration, a global leader in restoring migratory bird patterns, and inspiration for the 1996 movie Fly Away Home. "A large autographed poster hangs on the wall of Joe Duff's office on High Street in ...

Read this article, featuring ground-breaking new research on youth and the Canadian Church. This article first appeared in Faith Today magazine. "Hemorrhaging Faith identifies four major reasons why youth find Church worthwhile and stay in or return to it. These "drivers" to ...

This article about my visit to South Sudan refugee camps appeared in Faith Today magazine and won the 2012 A.C. Forrest Memorial Award for excellence in religious journalism.  Click here to read this article. "Even at 5000 feet above it, I knew ...