Join us Thursday, November 25th at 7pm for FBCW's Fireside Chat with Federation of BC Writers Ambassador, Betsy Warland. This chat will be about an hour long and will feature our special guest host, Tara Borin. The audience will have an opportunity to ask questions.
About Betsy Warland
Betsy Warland has 12 books of poetry, creative nonfiction, and lyric prose. Among the leading lyric prose writers in Canada, her collection of essays on writing, Breathing the Page—Reading the Act of Writing (2010) became a bestseller. In 2013, Warland created a new publishing template: an interactive salon on her website that features excerpts from Oscar of Between, Guest Writers and Artist’s work and Featured Readers’ comments.
In April of 2016, Oscar of Between—A Memoir of Identity and Ideas was one of two books that launched Caitlin Press’ new imprint, Dagger Editions, dedicated to books about and by queer women. Reviews of Oscar of Between in the U.S., Germany and Canada have called it “an achievement,” “a roman a clef,” “truly luminous,” and a “tour de force.”
Warland received the Mayor’s Arts Award for Literary in Vancouver in 2016. In 2017, she will be the Lyric Prose and Poetry Mentor for The Writer’s Studio at S.F.U.
Throughout her career, Warland has been a dedicated to emerging writers. In 1975, she initiated the Toronto Women’s Writing Collective that produced numerous literary events and publications. She also initiated and co-coordinated the Women and Words—les femmes et le mots conference (Vancouver 1983), that brought together one thousand women from across Canada involved in all aspects of contemporary literature.
She designed and directed of The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser from 2001-2012. As The Writer’s Studio director, she initiated the annual 2-day DTES Writers’ Jamboree at Carnegie Centre (2008-2012) that spawned the ongoing and highly successful Thursdays Writing Collective (Carnegie Centre) lead by TWS alumni Elee Krajlii Gardiner.
In 2004, Warland co-founded the cross-Canada Creative Writers Nonfiction Collective; in 2007 she founded and continues to mentor in the six-month Vancouver Manuscript Intensive program. She has been a professional creative writing teacher and manuscript consultant/editor for the past 30 years.
