Monique Polak

Once a book is published, it has a life of its own. If you're lucky and your book is well distributed, it will be read by many people. I remember how excited I was when my daughter told me she

I spent the weekend with a very dear friend in Kingston, Ontario. On the drive home, I listened to a really good CBC interview with American novelist/graphic artist/playwright Lynda Barry. I have to

I just had a delicious mango-pineapple smoothie at a cafe on Sherbrooke St., in NDG, the Montreal neighbourhood where I live. Better even than the smoothie (which was totally yum-yum) was the company

Well, at least I need to be a little in love wih my narrator. Most YA (young adult) novels are written in the first person (of all of mine, only one, On the Game, is told from the

Pretty messy, no? I shot that photo for you this morning because I want you to see what the floor

We all have our weaknesses and though I hate to admit it, mine might be THINKING!! I'm way better at DOING!! (If you know me, you'll know that I am a very active person.) So you can imagine

This weekend, I was reading in the Montreal Gazette about film director Ken Scott and how he came up with the idea for his latest movie, Les doigts croches (Sticky Fingers), which is about

You may remember that after one of my school visits this spring, I mentioned a student named Delilah in one of my blog entries. Delilah was determined to improve her writing and she was going to try

Today again, I can't take credit for the title of my blog entry. The line, "we are our own best material" is a paraphrase of something Irish-American writer and teacher Frank McCourt

I got the title for today's blog entry from an interview I heard yesterday on CBC radio. Literary journalist Eleanor Wachtel was interviewing Jackie Kay, a Scottish poet. Jackie, who is bi-racial,