News and Notes from the Field

Need an author for a school visit or student writing workshop? A speaker for a writer's or educator's conference? How about a keynote presentation for your women's group or professional organization? You've come to the right place: I've got ... Read More  

I can’t count the number of times a writing instructor has said in a workshop to ‘find the universal in the particular’, but somehow I always need to hear it. It’s such a good reminder that often we think ... Read More  

Research is how nonfiction writers ensure the accuracy of the info in our books, and it's always a lengthy and challenging process. When I started researching a book about women erased from history, I knew the work was going ... Read More  

Once people know a male scientist’s name, they tend to give him credit for the discoveries of other men. Quite a lot of the time, they also give him credit for discoveries made by a female scientist. Especially if ... Read More  

What if we could solve the world’s housing shortage and climate crisis with teamwork and technology? Read More  

All the water on Earth is ... All the water on Earth! Look around you. Water is everywhere you look, whether you can see it or not! We are surrounded by water, in its liquid form, solid or vapor. Not ... Read More  

When I decided to write a book about women who’d been erased from history, the first question I had to ask became: What is a woman? The answer’s not nearly as clear as many people want to believe. For ... Read More  

For a long time, scholars were obsessed with straight lines, hierarchies, and the idea of "progress." That sort of linear (and often racist) thinking led them to describe magic as a thing only "primitive" people believed in. As civilizations ... Read More  

Welcome to Cantastic Authorpalooza, featuring posts by and about great Canadian children’s book creators! Today’s guest: Amanda West Lewis. Take it away, Amanda! I work in a number of different genres and media. My background is in theatre and ... Read More  

It’s here, it’s here, it’s finally (almost) here! After SIX YEARS of research and writing and fact checking (and rage and tears and more fact checking), I am thrilled to introduce my 24th nonfiction book for children: THE MATILDA ... Read More  

While I do love Jurassic Park (the first one - seriously, movie scientists, learn from your mistakes already), I'm regularly infuriated by real-life de-extinction programs. First, for a lot of complex science reasons I won't go into, it's not ... Read More  

Be yourself. But dress how we say to dress. Your school clothes must cover up your shoulders, cleavage, and knees. Your sports uniform is a skimpy little number, but it’s no big deal. A teenage girl’s instructions for how ... Read More  

Happy International Day of Forests! Looking for ways to learn about forests, or raise awareness about all the amazing things they do for the planet? Allow me to suggest some resources: Bimaadiziwin Mitigoog – Trees of Life This set ... Read More  

When the internet first exploded, lo these many moons ago, there was a whole lot of hand-wringing over the death of nonfiction books. Who’d bother reading a book when they could just google the answer? A lot of us, ... Read More  

Because sometimes, laughing is the only way to keep from screaming. Read More  

Freedom to Read Week is a time to remember and preserve our intellectual right to read any book we wish to. But if the book doesn’t exist, how do we know what we don’t know? Since Russia launched its attacks on ... Read More  

Book banning has been accelerating in the USA for several years now, and their National Coalition Against Censorship has some excellent resources that can help Canadians fight for the freedom to read.  Read More  

In July 2025, Alberta’s education minister, Demetrios Nicolaides, issued a ministerial order that threatened to ban hundreds of books from the shelves of school libraries here in Canada. For Julie and I, the alarm bells went off immediately—we had ... Read More