Why Start a New Literary Prize for Women Writers?
When my friend Janice Zawerbny asked me to help her start a literary prize for women, I had no idea what I was signing up for. Zawerbny is a Toronto editor and she was upset by the grim statistics about women’s writing that I brought to a Vancouver Writers Fest panel in 2012. Like people …
Why don’t more Canadians know about Constance Beresford-Howe?
When you think of the giants in Canadian literature, chances are you think of writers such as Michael Ondaatje, Alice Munro or Margaret Atwood. Few readers these days remember Constance Beresford-Howe, who wrote ground-breaking novels about the struggle of women to be autonomous. You may not know about her because she was shy. Or because, …