QWF’s Writers in the Community program pairs small groups of young people with a professional writer or literary performance artist who can teach them and, more important, motivate them, to use language to express themselves in productive ways. In each project, a writer-facilitator works with a small group for 10 weeks, teaching them language tools, giving them writing prompts, and ultimately, boosting their self-confidence by showing them that they are capable of producing literary work of value.
Recent projects
Meet the writer-facilitators
Tanya Evanson
Tanya Evanson is a poet, performer, producer and educator. Active since 1996, her spoken word has featured widely across North America, and she has an award-winning videopoem, three studio albums and six artist books of poetry under her belt. She is director of Spoken Word at The Banff Centre, received the 2013 Golden Beret Award and was 2013 Poet of Honour at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word. Recent work includes guest editing Arc Poetry Magazine and publication in Oratorealis, Cordite, Canadian Review of Literature in Performance, WomanSpeak, Where the Nights Are Twice As Long (Gooselane 2015) and The Great Black North – Contemporary African Canadian Poetry (Frontenac 2013). Performance highlights include the Calgary Spoken Word Festival, Bowery Poetry Club, Vancouver Writers Fest, Vancouver Folk Music Festival, Edmonton Poetry Festival, Blue Met, Words Aloud, Ottawa International Writer’s Festival, Verses, CBC and SLAM stages. Based in Montreal, she is at work on a spoken word album, short film and international tour.
I particularly liked the fact that we would write a lot and there wasn’t very much theory and
young writerwe would become better by writing every day.
Program sponsors
We would also like to express our gratitude to the following sponsors, without whom the Writers in the Community program would not be possible
