By JK, on April 24th, 2012 Anyone who’s been in my garden, talked gardening with me, or even been a frequent guest on this site, will know of my love for Gayla Trail’s gardening books and blog. Steph and I could get WWGD (What Would Gayla Do?) bracelets, we refer to her so often. This spring she brought out a new book, Easy Growing, which focuses on herbs and edible flowers. While we grew some herbs last year, this book was probably the push that got us to embrace edible flowers this year. (We’re taking the easy route to start, using Urban Harvest’s edible flowers mix.) Like my perennial favourite Grow Great Grub, Easy Growing is packed with essential info and gorgeous photographs, but really stands out from other garden writing because of its grounded advice that keeps it real and makes gardening a possibility for anyone. (Yes, anyone.)
JK: I learned to garden from you, but where did you pick up your initial gardening know-how?
GT: Oh wow. You’ve already made me a bit teary. I grew my first successful in-ground food garden while I lived in a student house in the summer of 1993 without consulting anything at all. I do believe that we got [...]
By JK, on January 27th, 2011
This week as we ramp up for Civilians Read, our panelists have been sharing their one-on-ones with this year’s authors. Yesterday, we ran Nic Boshart’s epic interview with Angie Abdou, and today we’re finishing up with Ron Nurwisah‘s chat with Terry Fallis, author of The Best Laid Plans.
RN: Where did the idea for The Best Laid Plans come from? I know that you’ve got quite a bit of experience working in politics, but what made you want to turn that into a novel?
TF: As a rookie novelist with a full-time job and a busy family life, I was looking for a topic that didn’t demand two years of research before I could write it. Having worked in politics, I figured I could just create the story and move directly to the writing. The only real research I did for the novel was to meet with a retired Deputy Clerk of the House of Commons to confirm that my parliamentary procedure was valid. Plus, I have strong feelings about the state of our democracy and politics and wanted to use satire to shine a light on the shortcomings as I see them.
R: [...]
By JK, on January 26th, 2011 In this final week before Civilians Read hits the airwaves (or internet lines), we’ve been sharing interviews that our panelists did with their authors. So far, we’ve shared chats with Jeff Lemire and Ami McKay, and today I have Nic Boshart‘s marathon interview with Angie Abdou to share with you. You’ll notice it’s quite a bit longer than the others (grab your glasses and a powerbar!), but I think that’s what happens when you put two fierce competitors together. I’ll let Nic take over the rest of the introduction . . .
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Angie Abdou is the absolutely astounding author of The Bone Cage, which is poor only in its breaking up my alliterative run. The book follows two Olympic hopefuls who in the early pages of the book qualify to participate in the 2000 Olympic summer games in Sydney, Australia. Digger and Sadie, a swimmer and a wrestler, surrounded by friends but isolated by rigorous training schedules and their need for success. For these characters, realizing their dreams means shutting everything, and everyone out.
Like Digger and Sadie, I too walk along a lonely road toward competition. I need to train myself mentally and physically to bring this book to the top [...]
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