Mixed Tape: Rea Tarvydas’s How To Pick Up A Maid In Statue Square

This week, writer Rea Tarvydas shares the songs that power her brand new short story collection. Read and give a listen!  Music is a big deal for me as a writer. I use it in different ways. Sometimes it’s to condition me into a piece of writing and, in that instance, I listen before I […]

Mixed Tape & CanLit Collections: Christy Ann Conlin’s The Memento

Christy Ann Conlin‘s brand new book The Memento “wields a strange power and force, both psychological and emotional” writes Robert Wiersema in The Toronto Star. Here, she shares the music and artifacts that helped breathed life into this “coming of age story with elements of ghost stories, haunted houses, family curses and folk tales.” It’s rare […]

Mixed Tape: Stephanie Domet’s Fallsy Downsies

Halifax writer Stephanie Domet shares her roots-flavoured song-list from her novel Fallsy Downsies. Read and listen!  Fallsy Downsies was born in an old bank vault turned secret after-hours drinking room below a pub that no longer exists, in a small town in rural Nova Scotia. It was after a fundraising show that had been organized by the […]

Mixed Tape: Ian Williams’s Personals

Today, Ian Williams gives us his collection of songs that helped him write his Griffin Poetry Prize-shortlisted collection, Personals. Rock on.    I was living in the States while writing Personals, thinking about Canada, thinking about distances. If this playlist is background music, consider it distant background music, coming from the neighbour down the hallway who listens […]

Mixed Tape: Erna Buffie’s Let Us Be True

Today, Winnipeg-based writer and film-maker Erna Buffie launches my new series, Mixed Tape (read about it and its sister project, CanLit Collections) with a meditation on the role music played in her debut novel Let Us Be True, and a song-list. Says Erna: The challenge of creating a mixed tape for Let Us Be True made me […]