Congratulations to the finalists for the CBC’s Canada Writes Short Story Prize! The five short-listed authors for the English-language competition are Becky Blake, Mathew Howard, Roderick Moody-Corbett, Eliza Robertson and Jay Tameling. Their stories were selected from a pool of over 2,400 submissions. At stake is the the grand prize of $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, a two-week residency at The Banff Centre, publication in Air Canada's enRoute magazine and well-deserved bragging rights. The jury, made up of Can. Lit giants Esi Edugyan, Lawrence Hill and Vincent Lam, will announce their choice for the winning story on Tuesday, March 26.

Open Book: Ontario has caught up with each of the finalists to find out more about their stories. Today, Eliza Robertson tells us about "L'Étranger," a story written in a "greasy hole in Toulouse" and loosely inspired by a trapped garden slug. You can read "L'Étranger" here.

Wilfrid Laurier University’s Faculty of Arts is calling for applicants for the Edna Staebler Laurier Writer-in-Residence position. The Writer-in-Residence will receive $25,000 for a three-month residency taking place from January 13 to April 11, 2014 on Wilfrid Laurier’s Waterloo campus. The current Writer-in-Residence is Andrew Westoll, author of The Riverbones and The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary.

Visual artist Allen Smutylo’s most recent book is The Memory of Water (WLU Press), a book of ten autobiographical stories from his travels to Canada's Arctic and beyond between 1970 and 2010. Filled with prints of his artwork, the book offers a visually appealing look at the natural world while at the same time addressing our relationship with water. Today Allen tells Open Book about revisiting the stories from his travels years later, how the presence of water influences his writing and how complicated it is to get people interested in conserving and respecting their water.

Congratulations to the finalists for the CBC’s Canada Writes Short Story Prize! The five short-listed authors for the English-language competition are Becky Blake, Mathew Howard, Roderick Moody-Corbett, Eliza Robertson and Jay Tameling. Their stories were selected from a pool of over 2,400 submissions. At stake is the the grand prize of $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, a two-week residency at The Banff Centre, publication in Air Canada's enRoute magazine and well-deserved bragging rights. The jury, made up of Can. Lit giants Esi Edugyan, Lawrence Hill and Vincent Lam, will announce their choice for the winning story on Tuesday, March 26.

Open Book: Ontario has caught up with each of the finalists to find out more about their stories. Today, Roderick Moody-Corbett tells us about "Parse," a story written as one long sentence with a Pomeranian dog running into the middle. You can read “Parse” here.

Rob Laidlaw’s book No Shelter Here: Making the World a Kinder Place for Dogs (Pajama Press) has been nominated for the Hackmatack Children's Choice Book Award. In No Shelter Here, Rob Laidlaw explores the mistreatment of dogs while at the same time focusing on the people he calls “dog champions” — the people around the world who devote their lives to helping dogs.

Anne Fleming’s book Gay Dwarves of America (Pedlar Press) is a finalist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. The Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize is a BC Book Prize that is awarded to the best work of fiction by a B.C./Yukon resident.

Janet Hepburn’s poetry has appeared in Room Magazine (2010, 2012); Carousel (2012); Existere Journal of Arts and Literature (2012); The Saving Bannister Poetry Anthology (2011); Arborealis, a Canadian Anthology of Poetry (2010) and Decabration 10th Anniversary Poetry Anthology (2010). She was selected to read on the Fringe Stage at Eden Mills 2012 Writers Festival and her poetry was shortlisted in the FreeFall 2011 Annual Poetry and Prose Contest. She has been a regular contributor to a regional weekly newspaper, writing personal life stories of passion and success. Her travel stories have been published online. Flee, Fly, Flown (Second Story Press) is her first published novel. Janet lives and works in Port Dover, a small town on the north shore of Lake Erie. For more information about Janet, please visit her website.

Janet’s novel Flee, Fly, Flown was officially published today. She will be reading and signing her book at her book launch in Port Dover, ON on March 30th, 2013. Please head over to Open Book’s Events page for further details.

In her answers to the Proust Questionnaire, Janet tells us about her greatest accomplishment, how she can live anywhere as long as there is a lake nearby and what her idea of happiness is.

Location

In case you missed it, here is an update of all the interviews and features on Open Book: Toronto this week.

Playwright Deanna Di Lello tells Open Book: Toronto about author Brian Francis’ Self-Editing 101 workshop and how it teaches writers how to look critically at their writing throughout the whole writing process, not just when the novel is complete. Read about it here.

Believable Evil

With Tara Conklin, Hillary Davidson, Ann Ireland, CS Richardson, and Adria Rotstein.

This month in Fiction Craft, we asked a group of writers: How do you develop believable villains or antagonists?

The sixth issue of seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics is now online. seventeen seconds came out as a natural extension of the eight issues of Poetics.ca, edited by rob mclennan and Stephen Brockwell. With a focus on Canadian writing, this journal has the goal of strengthening the dialogue on contemporary poetics by publishing new writing and conversation about that writing.

The sixth issue includes the following articles:

Cameron Anstee