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Summit Presenters
| Keynote Presenter: Angela Ackerman Angela Ackerman is a writing coach, international speaker, and co-author of the bestselling Emotion Thesaurus and its many sequels. Her guides are sourced by universities, recommended by agents and editors, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, and psychologists around the world. Angela is also the co-founder of the popular site, Writers Helping Writers, as well as One Stop for Writers, a portal to game-changing storytelling tools that enable writers to think and write like story experts. | Sessions: Rejecting Rejection: Believing in Ourselves & Each Other Description: A writer’s path is not easy, and self-doubt and fear can trap us within a bubble of isolation. But, if we push through this sphere, we’ll find a gateway to success on the other side: peers to help us learn, grow, and be our advocates so we become the authors—and mentors—we’re meant to be. Revealing Hidden Emotion & Subtext Description: Characters aren’t always forthright; what they say or do and how they feel can be very different. Join Angela Ackerman as she explores ways to show what’s happening under the surface when characters are trying hard to hide what they really feel or think. Fireside Chat with Angela Ackerman hosted by KT Wagner Description: Join host KT Wagner as she discusses writing, community, and more with Angela Ackerman, author of Emotion Thesaurus. |
| Keynote Presenter: Monique Gray Smith Author of: Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults and Tilly and the Crazy Eight Monique Gray Smith is an award-winning, best-selling author. Her books often weave her Indigenous culture, worldview and history through storytelling and cover a broad spectrum of ages, topics and emotions. Monique has been sober and involved in her healing journey for over 30 years. She is well known for her storytelling, spirit of generosity and focus on resilience. |
SESSIONS:
Presentation title: Leading with a Light Heart Description: An inspiring keynote that will focus on imagination, inspiration and how we help build a path forward for humanity in the stories we write and tell. |
| PRESENTER: Paul Bae Author of You Suck, Sir Writer-producer of The Black Tapes Paul Bae is an author (You Suck, Sir) and award-winning audio drama writer-producer (The Black Tapes; The Big Loop). Paul is the director of Marvel's hit series MARVELS, had a multi-series deal with Spotify, and presently in development on his new series with QCODE. He sold The Black Tapes to NBC in the room in 2018 with deals at Syfy, AMC and Amazon soon after. He is repped for TV & film by Range Media Partners and Entertainment 360, CAA for podcasts. |
SESSIONS:
Writing Audio Fiction Podcasts Description: How to adapt your story ideas into audio fiction. Ins & Outs of Comedy Description: A discussion on finding your comedic voice and using that not only in the writing but in your general meetings and pitch presentations. |
| PRESENTER: Caitlin Jans Bio: Caitlin Jans has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. She is the co-founder of Authors Publish and The Poetry Marathon. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and literary journals including: The Literary Review of Canada, Eleven, Eleven, The Adroit Journal, and Killer Verse. Her prose and poetry has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize, BILiNE, The Best Small Fictions Anthology, and The Best of the Net. You can learn more at www.caitlinthomson.com. | SESSIONS: Words as Seeds: A Generative Session Description: Using a multi-genre prompt, writers will generate a piece and have the opportunity to share it with others. Publishing in Literary Journals Description: This lecture focuses on the whys and hows of submitting your work to literary journals, an often overlooked avenue towards building a career as a professional writer. Reading Night Featuring: Susan Olding, Caitlin Jans, Wanda Taylor, Joanna Lilley, Briony Penn Description: An evening of readings from the presenters of the 2023 Spring Summit. |
 | PRESENTER: Chelene Knight Author of Junie Bio: Chelene Knight is the author of three books. She is currently working on a commissioned book on Black self-love and joy forthcoming with HarperCollins Canada in 2023. Chelene is the founder of Breathing Space Creative Literary Studio. www.breathingspacecreative.com |
SESSIONS:
Morning Creative Pep Talks Description: Start the day off with a creative pep talk or prompt from writer, editor and writing coach Chelene Knight in your mailbox. |
| PRESENTER: Joanna Lilley Author of Endlings Bio: Joanna Lilley loves sharing the joy of words and has given readings and workshops as far afield as Alaska and Iceland. Her latest poetry book Endlings won the Fred Kerner Book Award and her novel Worry Stones was longlisted for the Caledonia Novel Award. Joanna lives in Whitehorse, Yukon, with gratitude on Kwanlin Dün First Nation and Ta'an Kwäch'än Council lands. In 2021 she received the Commissioner of Yukon’s Borealis Prize for literary contribution. | SESSIONS: Poets Toolbox: Just Add Poetry Description: Rummage in a poet’s toolbox and you’ll be sure to find something useful for your prose. Join poetry and fiction author Joanna Lilley for this craft talk on the indivisible relationship between all writing forms and how you can use poetry techniques to enhance your fiction and nonfiction writing. Reading Night Featuring: Susan Olding, Caitlin Jans, Wanda Taylor, Joanna Lilley, Briony Penn Description: An evening of readings from the presenters of the 2023 Spring Summit |
| PRESENTER: Thea Lim Author of An Ocean of Minutes Bio: Thea Lim is the author of An Ocean of Minutes, which was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, translated into three languages, and optioned for television. Her writing has been published in Granta, The Nation, The Paris Review, Best Canadian Stories, The Guardian, Guernica, and others. This year she is the Barker Fairley Distinguished Visitor at the University of Toronto. She grew up in Singapore and now lives with her family in Toronto. | SESSIONS: Courting Disaster to Soup Up Your Story Description: The writer's instinct is to avoid collapse (of ideas, narrative, or motivation), yet disaster is our friend. This workshop will show how disasters help with structure, with inspiration, and with world and character building, when what looks like a story problem unlocks hidden dimension. We’ll even tackle that greatest of writerly disasters: self-doubt. Panel: Mentoring Matters with Thea Lim, Susan Olding, and Wanda Taylor hosted by Megan Cole Description: Why work with a mentor? To improve your writing skills and develop your manuscript, of course. But also, to strengthen your ties to a writing community. Join us for a discussion how to find and fund mentorship opportunities and what type of relationship might work best for you. |
| PRESENTER: Susan Olding Author of Big Reader: Essays Bio: Susan Olding is the author of Big Reader: Essays, a finalist for the Canadian Authors Association Fred Kerner Award and the Alberta Publishing Awards Trade Nonfiction Book of the Year, and Pathologies: A Life in Essays, selected by 49th Shelf and Amazon.ca as one of 100 Canadian books to read in a lifetime. She lives with her family in the traditional territories of the Lekwungen and W̱SÁNEĆ nations, in Victoria, British Columbia. | SESSIONS: Persona & POV in the Personal Essay Description: I, I, I, I: the first-person POV is arguably the most distinguishing characteristic of contemporary CNF. An authentic projection of personality and a fictionalized construct, persona in the essay and memoir is both controlling consciousness and subject. In this interactive craft talk, we’ll consider how our work might benefit from the tension. Panel: Mentoring Matters with Thea Lim, Susan Olding, and Wanda Taylor hosted by Megan Cole Description: Why work with a mentor? To improve your writing skills and develop your manuscript, of course. But also, to strengthen your ties to a writing community. Join us for a discussion how to find and fund mentorship opportunities and what type of relationship might work best for you. Reading Night Featuring: Susan Olding, Caitlin Jans, Wanda Taylor, Joanna Lilley, Briony Penn Description: An evening of readings from the presenters of the 2023 Spring Summit |
 | PRESENTER: Briony Penn Author of: Following the Good River and The Real Thing Bio: Briony Penn lives in a forest on an island relative of the W̱SÁNEĆ people in the Salish Sea. Her books and articles, which have won local recognition, revolve and depend on the coast. She is most interested in trying to write the relationships that tie us together in the strange and unstable ecosystems created by colonization. | Community Support: Writing/Righting the Wrongs Description: As a non-fiction writer on local environmental/cultural history, I'm interested in how we practice reciprocity with those that we write about. How do we share time and resources with the community that we write about, when both are in short supply for writers? This presentation will explore ways writers can support a community and how a community can support a writer. Reading Night Featuring: Susan Olding, Caitlin Jans, Wanda Taylor, Joanna Lilley, Briony Penn Description: An evening of readings from the presenters of the 2023 Spring Summit. |
| PRESENTER: Wanda Taylor Author of: The Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children: the Hurt, the Hope and the Healing, and Ride or Die Bio: Wanda Taylor is an award winning writer, journalist, and college professor. She is the author of eight fiction and non-fiction books in children’s, youth, and adult markets, and serves as Faculty/Mentor in the MFA Creative Non-Fiction Program at Kings College. Wanda teaches courses in journalism, story writing, and communications, and freelances as a book editor and sensitivity reader. Her magazine features, poems, and essays can be found in publications and anthologies across Canada, the US, and the UK. | SESSIONS: Book Proposals: A Masterclass Description: This session will dive into the elements that go into writing a book proposal, why it's a necessary selling tool, the do's and dont's of crafting a strong proposal, finding the right hook, and pulling it all together to make the proposal irresistable to an agent or publisher. Panel: Mentoring Matters with Thea Lim, Susan Olding, and Wanda Taylor hosted by Megan Cole Description: Why work with a mentor? To improve your writing skills and develop your manuscript, of course. But also, to strengthen your ties to a writing community. Join us for a discussion how to find and fund mentorship opportunities and what type of relationship might work best for you. Reading Night Featuring: Susan Olding, Caitlin Jans, Wanda Taylor, Joanna Lilley, Briony Penn Description: An evening of readings from the presenters of the 2023 Spring Summit |
| PRESENTER: Andrea Warner Author of the forthcoming Rise Up and Sing! Bio: Andrea Warner (she/her) writes and talks. A lot. She’s the author of Buffy Sainte-Marie: The Authorized Biography (2018) and We Oughta Know: How Four Women Ruled the '90s and Changed Canadian Music (2015). Her new book, Rise Up and Sing! Power, Protest, and Activism in Music, will be published by Greystone Kids (Fall 2023). She’s the co-writer and associate producer of the 2022 documentary, Buffy Sainte-Marie: Carry It On, co-hosts the weekly feminist pop culture podcast, Pop This!, and is an associate producer at CBC Music. Andrea is a settler who was born and raised in Vancouver on the unceded traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. | HOST: 2023 SUMMIT GALA Description: Join host Andrea Warner as we celebrate the winners of the 2022 Federation of BC Writers: Literary Contests. The evening will showcase readings, prizes, and a few special announcements. |
| Join us for a special Summit edition of In/Verse. This event will feature poetry readings from Dominique Bernier-Cormier, Emily Osborne, and Yilin Wang, hosted by Neil Surkan. Dominique Bernier-Cormier is a Québécois/Acadian poet and translator. His first book Correspondent (Goose Lane, 2018) was longlisted for the Raymond Souster Award. His second book Entre Rive and Shore (Goose Lane, 2023) is a hybrid, multilingual work of poetry and translation exploring bilingualism and Acadian identity. Bernier-Cormier lives in Vancouver, where he teaches at a Francophone high school. Emily Osborne’s poetry, fiction and Old Norse-to-English verse translations have appeared in journals such as Vallum, CV2, Canthius, The Polyglot, The Literary Review of Canada, and Barren Magazine. Her debut book of poetry, Safety Razor, is forthcoming from Gordon Hill Press (April 2023) and was recently featured on CBC Books. She is the author of the chapbook Biometrical (Anstruther Press) and winner of The Malahat Review’s Far Horizons Award for Poetry. Emily has a PhD in Old Norse Literature from the University of Cambridge. Yilin Wang (she/they) is a writer, poet and Chinese-English translator who lives on the unceded lands of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples (Vancouver, BC). Her writing and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in Clarkesworld, Fantasy Magazine, POETRY, Guernica, Words Without Borders, The Malahat Review, Room, CV2, and elsewhere. She is the editor and translator of The Lantern and the Night Moths, an anthology of modern and contemporary Chinese poetry forthcoming with Invisible Publishing. Yilin has won the Foster Poetry Prize, received an ALTA Virtual Travel Fellowship and has been a two-time finalist for the Far Horizons Award for Short Fiction. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC and is a graduate of the 2021 Clarion West Writers Workshop. Neil Surkan was born in Penticton, BC. He is the author of two full-length poetry collections — Unbecoming (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021), which was selected as one of three finalists for the City of Calgary’s W.O. Mitchell Award, and On High (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2018) — and the chapbooks Their Queer Tenderness(Knife-Fork-Book, 2020) and Super, Natural (Anstruther Press, 2017). His award-winning poems have appeared in numerous Canadian magazines. Neil currently lives and teaches in Nanaimo, on the traditional and unceded territory of the Snuneymuxw First Nation, with Luca, Edi, and Lloyd. |
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