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I often receive letters from writers looking for advice and words of wisdom.
Here are a few things I can recommend for writers in Canada:
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The Canadian Writer's Guide
(Fitzhenry & Whiteside) and The Canadian Writer’s Market (McClelland & Stewart) are both quite useful.
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Getting excerpts or shorter works published in magazines helps. Doing readings really helps.
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Many publishers, with their resources stretched as thin as they are, don’t have enough time to pursue all opportunities for you, so you pretty much have to do it yourself. Have a mailing list of your own — friends, contacts, as many names as you can muster, plus media people (probably to be supplied by your publisher) — and try to persuade your publisher or the organizers of the reading to pay for the mailing.
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In a way, the whole process is just as haphazard and/or serendipitous as job-hunting. While it seems to most of us that it should be a fairly straightforward matter to match interested employers with interesting employees, more often the connections are made through word-of-mouth and friend-of-a-friend connections. Take full advantage of your own connections.
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Rest assured that it takes time to build a reputation and an audience.
Good luck!
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Recently
"Thriller Suite" poetry on Wattpad.
Los Angeles Times Innovator's Award!
Podcast on Slate: "Stranger than Fiction".
The Handmaid's Tale ballet in Winnipeg.
"Cat's Robo-Cradle" in The New Yorker.
Margaret's Events
May 10-12 : Springsong, Pelee Island, ON.
May31: Dallas Museum of Art, "Arts and Letters, Dallas, TX.
July 25: Chautaqua Institution Authors' Series, NY.
August 15: MaddAddam preview aboard the Queen Mary 2.
August 28: Bristol Festival of Ideas, England.
September 21: Library of Congress National Book Festival, Washington DC.
September 25: Kingston Writers' Festival, Kingston, ON.
November 2: Windsor Book Festival, Windsor, ON.
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