Creating a Universe with Words
2022-02-19 10:00 - 13:00, 2022-02-26 10:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | QWF Office, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Room 3, Westmount, QC, H3Z 1X4, Canada
Two Saturdays: February 19 and 26, 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
All are welcome.
Limited to 12 participants
I love what Albert Einstein once said about imagination. He said: “Imagination is intelligence having fun.” And that is what this workshop is indeed intended to be: a fast paced, hands-on workshop based on a series of writing exercises where we will find and surpass the limits that contain our everyday writing universe. We will, of course, develop our imagination outside the box and have creative fun.
Sessions will be tailored to meet the needs and interests of the group. They will be combined with lectures to help you gain new insight to construct and complete your personal writing project. We’ll explore ways to reinforce the structure of your existing work, gain deeper understanding of characters, fix plot holes, and tie up storylines. We’ll also work on developing another skill invaluable to any writer: the ability to pinpoint what might not be working—and cut or rework if need be. This workshop is designed to help you stay motivated and focused through the difficult parts of writing and aims to give you the tools to enjoy your writing process (again, if you fear you are not enjoying it anymore). The time will be split between discussing technique in published models, and reading and discussing our own creations.
Creating a Universe with Words will be a two-session workshop and is intended for experienced and beginner writers alike. You’ll need paper, pencils and—most importantly—an eraser! We will keep things interactive, giving short presentations to the group.

You will receive links to the texts we will be using as models. Reading them before our start date is strongly recommended.

Antolina Ortiz Moore describes herself as a citizen of the world. She was born in Mexico City in 1971. She studied at the French Licée in Mexico City and studied Philosophy at the Universidad Iberoamericana.
She migrated to Canada in 2000, then returned to México in 2009, where she lived in the town of Coatepec. She founded an unschooling project and a non-profit organization that promoted ecological and cultural awareness without barriers. She coordinated the planting of over 11,000 trees in a mist forest area. In 2017, due to mounting violence in the area, she decided to move back to Montreal.
Antolina´s last novel, Seda araña, won the First Mexican Woman´s Short Novel Competition in Mexico (2019), and was shortlisted for the prestigious Romulo Gallegos Literary prize in Venezuela (2020) and the Nadal Literary Competition in Spain (one of the most important in Spanish Literature). Her first and second novels received the José Eufemio Lora y Lora & Juan Carlos Onetti international award (in Peru, 2010). Her first published book was her social work thesis at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico, with a prologue by Elena Poniatowska; it sold over fifty thousand copies.
Web page: https://antolinaortizmoore.com
Instagram: oantolina
Twitter: @antolina_ortiz
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/antolina.ortiz/

Poetry To See: Creating Visual Poetry Broadsides
2022-02-24 10:30 - 12:30 | Online – Please RSVP to receive a Zoom link
Participants will use text and image to create your very own visual poetry broadsides.
A poetry broadside (or broadsheet) is one sheet of paper printed on one side with a poem. Visual poetry is a growing field wherein poets use linguistic fragments to create poems that are also works of visual art.
Participants will create original mixed-media works of art fusing your own poetic texts with your own original visuals, making unique poem-objects that are both read and seen!
Through playful experimentation you will explore various text-making and image-making approaches, resulting not in an illustrated poem, but a poem that also derives its meaning and impact through its visual delivery.
Both the poetry and the visuals will be created from scratch during the workshop. No art experience necessary, just a willingness to try things out.
We will use collage, rubber stamps, stencils, dry-transfer lettering and any and all non-digital ways of making text. Materials can be found around the house and can be augmented by inexpensive store-bought items. We will provide a list of possible materials so you are prepared.
This workshop is FREE but space is limited. To register: awe@atwaterlibrary.ca.
Co-presented with the Atwater Writers Exhibition, and generously supported by the Community Cultural Action Fund (CCAF) of the Department of Canadian Heritage.

SpeakUp: Night & Day) Dreams
2022-02-24 19:00 - 21:00 | Zoom, https://bit.ly/35akIGi
FREE EVENT
SpeakUp: The Montreal Inter-Active Poetry Exchange
Poets: Tamara Nazywalskj, Bryan Sentes, Derek Godin.
A POETRY READING WITH A DIFFERENCE: AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT
Each audience member receives a copy of the poems by email. The poems are also displayed on screen.
Poet reads their poem, followed by 15 to 20-minute discussion.
Poet reads their poem a final time.
Visit our Facebook page for more details.
Contact us to register and receive the Zoom link: MTLSpeakUp@gmail.com

Virtual Poets' Retreat: Healing Ourselves and the Planet
2022-02-25 - 2022-02-27 | Online
Join us February 25-27, 2022 on Zoom for a Poets’ Retreat focussed on healing ourselves and the planet.
Explore relationships between your writing practice and climate change in these gentle, restorative, and inspiring workshops with like-minded poets using their craft to promote change and right relationships between humans and the rest of Nature. Three workshops, an exclusive poetry reading, peer writing groups, discussion with a publisher, Qigong, and an opportunity to read in the Authors and Artists festival. 10+ hours of programming: $225 CAD. Payment plans and one competitive, needs-based scholarship for a BIPOC poet available. Workshops: Artistic Contemplative Practice for EcoJustice (additionally, Qigong) by JuPong Lin, performance poet and faculty at Goddard Collage; Tender Witness: Climate Grieving for Poets by Dina Stander, end of life navigator and poet; Moon Botany by performance artist, writer, and disability culture activist Petra Kuppers. All workshop providers are BIPOC, as are all headline speakers in the co-occurring Authors and Artists online festival, whose theme is Writing the Land, tied to the WTL project (www.writingtheland.org).
For more on the Retreat: https://www.nature-culture.net/2022-poet-retreat
For more on the festival, whose headline speakers include poet Ross Gay, John Francis, Dina Gilio-Whitaker, Rahawa Haile and Latria Graham: https://www.nature-culture.net/authors-artists-festival

Copyright Conversation: Zong! The Politics of Translation with M. nourbeSe Philip
2022-02-25 12:30 - 13:30 | Online – Please RSVP to receive a Zoom link
PLEO is excited to announce the return of our Copyright Conversations series! Taking Our Voice: Copyright as a Tool to Achieve Equity, will take a deep dive into the experiences of several artists as they work to navigate complex copyright issues.
The first of the series, planned for Fair Dealing week, will raise questions of fairness and equity when dealing with issues of translation. PLEO Founder and Legal Director Martha Rans will be joined by writer, painter and scholar, Stéphane Martelly, and Toronto-based poet, author, and lawyer M. nourbeSe Philip to discuss Philip’s experience of having her book-length poetry cycle Zong! misrepresented as a result of the text being translated without her consultation.
Register Here!

About M. nourbeSe Philip:
Toronto-based poet, writer, and lawyer, M. nourbeSe Philip has been the recipient of Canada Council awards, numerous Ontario Arts Council grants and was the recipient of a Toronto Arts Council award. In l988 Philip won the prestigious Casa de las Americas prize for the manuscript version of her book, She Tries Her Tongue, for which she also won the Tradewinds Collective prize (Trinidad & Tobago) in both the poetry and the short story categories.
Philip’s first novel, Harriet’s Daughter, was one of two runners-up in the l989 Canadian Library Association Prize for children’s literature, and first runner-up in the Max and Greta Abel Award for Multicultural Literature. In 1990, Philip was made a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry and in 1991 became a McDowell Fellow. In l994, Philip’s short story, “Stop Frame” was awarded the Lawrence Foundation Award, and in 1995 she was awarded the Toronto Arts Award in writing and publishing.
M. nourbeSe Philip has been recognized for her work as “a revolutionary poet, writer and thinker” by the Elizabeth Fry Society of Toronto which presented her their 2001 “Rebels for a Cause” award. That same year, Philip was the recipient of the YWCA “Woman of Distinction” award in the Arts. In 2002 she was awarded a Chalmers Fellowship in Poetry and was featured on the Black Heritage Month poster. She has sat as the writer in residence at Toronto Women’s Bookstore and at McMaster University.
Philip’s short stories, essays, reviews and articles have appeared in magazines and journals in North America and England, and her poetry has been extensively anthologized. Her work – poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, is taught widely at the university level and is the subject of much academic writing and critique.
In 2008, The Mercury Press and Wesleyan University Press published NourbeSe Philip’s collection of poetry, Zong!, an extended 182-page poetry cycle, composed entirely from the words in the case report, Gregson vs. Gilbert, related to the murder of Africans on board a slave ship at the end of the eighteenth century.

About Stéphane Martelly:
Writer, painter and scholar, Stéphane Martelly was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Through a profoundly transdisciplinary approach, she confronts theory, critical reflection and art in her work. She has published poetry [La Boîte noire suivi de Départs 2004)] and children’s tales [Couleur de rue, 1999 and L’Homme aux cheveux de fougère, 2002]. Her pictorial works are showcased in the digital art book Folie passée à la chaux vive (Madness spent in quicklime) (Publie.net, 2010).
Her scholarly work notably includes working in the Montreal-based Life Stories Of Montrealers Displaced By War, Genocide And Other Human Rights Violations as a researcher and coordinator. She also wrote a monography on Haitian poet Magloire-Saint-Aude (Le Sujet opaque, 2001) and several articles on Caribbean literature. Her latest essay in research-creation is: Les Jeux du dissemblable. Folie, marge et féminin en littérature haïtienne contemporaine, Nota Bene, 2016.
Her recent publications are La Maman qui s’absentait (Vents d’Ailleurs, 2011), Inventaires (Triptyque, 2016) and L’enfant gazelle (Remue-Ménage, 2018).
Since 2019 Martelly has held the position of Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in the Department of Arts, Languages and Literature at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec.

2022 Authors and Artists Festival
2022-02-26 10:00 - 2022-02-27 15:00 | Online
Free and Online: Authors and Artists festival February 26-27, 2022 . Headline speakers: Ross Gay, John Francis, Jillian Hishaw, Dina Gilio-Whitaker. Rahawa Hailie & Latria Graham. All BIPOC speakers on the topic of Writing the Land. Poets from the Writing the Land project include Alice B. Fogel, Angela Vasquez, CMarie Fuhrman, Paul Richmond, JuPong Lin, Maiah Merino, Katherine Hagopian Berry, and Candace Curran. Please join us!

A Literary Conversation with Author Mikhail Iossel
2022-03-12 14:00 - 16:00 | Westmount Public Library, 4626 Rue Sherbrooke Ouest, Westmount, Quebec, H3Z 1G1, Canada
in collaboration with the Westmount Public Library
Join author Mikhail Iossel for a discussion about his book Love Like Water, Love Like Fire, winner of the QWF’s 2021 Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. Iossel’s twenty stories of Soviet childhood and adulthood, dissidence and subsequent immigration, are filled with wit and humor even as they describe the daily absurdities of a fickle and often perilous reality and being a Jew in the Soviet Union.
Your vaccine passport and personal ID are required to attend this event. For more information on the vaccine passport visit quebec.ca.
Please note that this event may take place online as the health situation evolves. We will contact you should this change occur.
If you do not have an email address, call 514 989-5355.
For more information, contact Daniel Míguez de Luca at 514 989-5530 or dmiguez@westmount.org.
Register for Free on Eventbrite

Translating Quebec
2022-03-14 20:00 - 22:00, 2022-03-21 20:00 - 22:00, 2022-03-28 20:00 - 22:00 | QWF Office, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Room 3, Westmount, QC, H3Z 1X4, Canada
8 Mondays, 8 to 10 p.m.
March 14 to May 2, 2022

Open to all.
Limited to 12 participants.

This workshop is aimed at anyone interested in exporting Quebec French to an English audience. Using the translator’s own experiences in the field as a springboard, the workshop will address the challenges—and fun!—of translating both a language and a culture. Participants will be encouraged to draw on their own well of cultural knowledge, and discussions are expected to be lively. We’ll tackle translation theory with a comparative reading of published translations; we’ll talk about the role of the church in contemporary Quebec French; we’ll take a look at media content and dip into the art of subtitling. Each week, participants will be given short selections to translate and workshop together. The focus of the workshop will be on translating what people speak, so don’t be afraid to make yourself heard!

Participants will be asked to reflect upon their own relationship to English and Quebec French as they develop the linguistic flexibility to navigate the challenges of translating from one to the other. Knowledge of both languages is mandatory, but participants are not required to have any formal translation experience.

Arielle Aaronson has published nine translations including titles of fiction, nonfiction, young adult fiction, and children’s literature. Her translation of Marie-Renée Lavoie’s Autopsy of a Boring Wife was longlisted for the 2021 Canada Reads book of the year. She has subtitled feature films shown across Quebec as well as content currently available on Netflix. She lives in Montreal with her husband and three children.

Facebook: Arielle Aaronson
https://www.arielleaaronson.com/

A Journey into Spoken Word
2022-03-15 18:00 - 20:00, 2022-03-22 18:00 - 20:00, 2022-03-29 18:00 - 20:00 | QWF Office, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Room 3, Westmount, QC, H3Z 1X4, Canada
8 Tuesdays, 6 to 8 p.m.
March 15 to May 3

Open to all
Limited to 12 participants

In this workshop, participants will step out of their comfort zones and onto the stage.

Objectives include learning about the history of spoken word and its place within the wider world of poetry, understanding some of the stigma surrounding spoken word and slam, and increasing appreciation for the craft of writing for performance.

Resource materials include but will not be limited to text, audio, and video from some of the best known and most beloved poets in Canada and the U.S. Participants will be expected to watch and/or listen to poems, discuss form and poetic devices, create original work, and share with the group.

Poetry as creative catharsis, democratization, and act of rebellion will be examined.

Performance tips such as mic use and engagement with the audience will also be discussed.

Deanna (DNA) Smith is a poet, performer, teaching artist, and social-justice advocate. Her artistic work is rooted in her experience as a fifth-generation Canadian who thinks in two languages and her exploration of identity as the descendent of kidnapped and exploited Africans. Deanna is a former Montreal Slam Champion and is currently the VP of the Throw Poetry Collective. She is eagerly anticipating a return to the stage with the Kalmunity Vibes Collective. Deanna has a background in Linguistics and Speech-Language Pathology. She has a Graduate Certificate in Creative Writing, and is currently pursuing another in Social Justice, Diversity, and Inclusion.

Mining Personal History to Enrich Our Short Fiction
2022-03-15 20:00 - 22:00, 2022-03-22 20:00 - 22:00, 2022-03-29 20:00 - 22:00 | QWF Office, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Room 3, Westmount, QC, H3Z 1X4, Canada
8 Tuesdays, 8 to 10 p.m.
March 15 to May 3

Open to all
Limited to 12 participants

“Some of these stories are closer to my own life than others are, but not one of them is as close as people seem to think.” — Alice Munro, from her Introduction to The Moons of Jupiter

When we write fiction, it seems inevitable that we will, at one point or another, be asked a certain, probing question: How much of that story is true?
Often, we deflect rather than answer, and make some great show of asserting our story is fiction and, therefore, not true. But by this time we are already squirming inside, feeling caught out. But caught out at what? That we have committed some sort of fraud? As if writing fiction from personal experience were cheating, like peeking at the answers we’ve scrawled on the palm of our hand in advance of the test?
In this workshop, seeking out kernels of truth from our own lives will be encouraged. We will embrace personal history for what it is: a fruitful mine for our short fiction. This is not, however, a study in autobiography. Personal experience can be a jumping-off point, the spark that sets our fictional stories in motion. It can also serve as adornment; a place from which to extract vivid details that enhance our fiction, to help our made-up stories feel alive. Yes, sometimes we write about what happened, but we strive to write about what could have happened.
We will explore writing exercises that, through examination of objects, activities, places, and time, can help us draw from our personal experiences and observations for the enrichment of our stories. We will also workshop one another’s short fiction in a respectful and supportive environment.
Recommended reading: Prior to our first session, please read “The Turkey Season” by Alice Munro, from her short story collection The Moons of Jupiter. The story can also be found online with a Google search, on the website of The New Yorker.

Mark Paterson is the author of the short story collections Dreamers and Misfits of Montclair, A Finely Tuned Apathy Machine, and Other People’s Showers, all from Exile Editions. His work has won the 3Macs carte blanche Prize, Geist magazine’s Literal Literary Postcard Story Contest, and the Atwater Library’s 150 Words for 150 Years contest. In 2020, his story “To Disappear Around Here” was runner-up for The Puritan’s Thomas Morton Prize.
www.markpaterson.ca
https://twitter.com/apathymachine
https://www.instagram.com/paterson.mark/
https://www.facebook.com/mark.paterson

Pitching on Paper: Creating a TV Series Proposal
2022-03-16 18:00 - 20:00, 2022-03-23 18:00 - 20:00 | QWF Office, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Room 3, Westmount, QC, H3Z 1X4, Canada
Six Wednesdays, 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
March 16 to April 20

Open to all
Limited to 12 participants

You’re armed with a great elevator pitch for a new television, documentary or digital series idea, and your friends, family and colleagues have encouraged you to pitch it to a broadcaster. The challenge is to move that idea from the confines of your creative imagination and into a well-structured and detailed concept.

In this 6-week workshop participants will expand, develop, structure, break down, and build up show ideas into full-blown proposals, ready to present to a network or production executive.

For those who don’t have a show idea at the ready, the first workshop will help you get those creative juices flowing to take a concept through the development process.

Week 1 – Elevator Pitch
The idea.

Week 2 – First Page
The beginning is crucial.

Week 3 – Structure
How it works.

Week 4 – Writing
Giving it life.

Week 5 – Rewriting
The perfect life.

Week 6 – The Full Pitch
It’s showtime.

Jennifer McAuley has produced and written hundreds of hours of television for over 30 years and developed new series and concepts for production companies throughout North America. Her most recent credits include Restoration Garage, My Worst Nightmare and Million Dollar Genius. She is currently working with Cineflix Montreal on Patrick Ayree’s Wild World for Love Nature.

As past head of production and development with various companies in Toronto, and executive producer with CBC and TVO, Jennifer has received and evaluated hundreds of pitches, and consulted on numerous TV show ideas. She has a Bachelor of Applied Arts in Journalism.

www.filltheframe.org

Narrative Non-Fiction: Creating Scenes
2022-03-16 20:00 - 22:00, 2022-03-23 20:00 - 22:00 | QWF Office, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Room 3, Westmount, QC, H3Z 1X4, Canada
Wednesdays, 8:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.
March 16 to May 4

This workshop is open to writers who have already taken a writing workshop or published at least one short piece of prose fiction or non-fiction.

Limited to 12 participants

Narrative non-fiction took off in the 1960s, when writers like Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, and Gay Talese started using the techniques of fiction writers to tell true stories. Sometimes called New Journalism, the genre exploded when fiction writers like Truman Capote and Norman Mailer switched over to non-fiction, attaining major critical and popular praise. The ever-increasing demand for non-fiction writing highlights readers’ desire to connect with stories that make sense of their surroundings.

Narrative non-fiction blends reporting, research, and storytelling. In this workshop we’ll learn about how to write scenes that are true to life. Instead of simply stating what happened, we’ll explore how to create a scene, as a screenwriter or novelist might. Your task will be to impose a narrative on reality – and make it interesting to readers. We’ll talk about the techniques behind writing about your own experience, and about documenting other people’s lives. We’ll discuss what constitutes non-fiction – and what doesn’t. We’ll speak about how to get access to places off-limits to most civilians, how to approach interesting characters, and how to interview them. We’ll also speak about mining rich veins of source material from dusty old books, or weird scientific studies, or unusual academic treatises.

Each of you will be asked to present one piece of writing to the group, which will be workshopped by the group. (Participants will read and discuss each other’s writing.) I will also hand out some examples of narrative non-fiction to illustrate what it is we’re speaking about. These will also inform and inspire your own work in the workshop. No advance work is required for the workshop, but do have an idea of what you’d like to work on in our time together. In our second session, we’ll be discussing what each student plans on workshopping.

Adam Leith Gollner is the author of The Book of Immortality, The Fruit Hunters, and Working in the Bathtub: Conversations with the Immortal Dany Laferrière. The former editor of Vice Magazine, his writing has appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Paris Review, Travel + Leisure, and The New Yorker online.

Write to Thrill
2022-03-17 18:00 - 20:00, 2022-03-24 18:00 - 20:00 | QWF Office, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Room 3, Westmount, QC, H3Z 1X4, Canada
8 Thursdays, 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.
March 17-May 5

Open to all.
Limited to 12 participants

Have you always wanted to write a thriller? Need help completing one you’ve already started? This is the workshop for you! Whether it’s a domestic noir or the CIA is chasing down your main character, we’ll spend eight weeks together working on plot, characterization, twists, dialogue, prose, and pacing. By the end of the workshop you’ll have a solid foundation for your novel. Participants should come to the workshop with a premise for their thriller in mind. After the first session, two participants a week, if they’re comfortable, will receive feedback on their writing from the instructor and the other class participants

Catherine McKenzie is the Globe & Mail Bestselling author of 13 novels, including I’ll Never Tell, Fractured, and The Good Liar. She lives in Montreal, Quebec, where she writes full time after having retired from practicing law after twenty years.

The Lawn Chair Soirée
2022-03-17 19:00 - 21:30 | Zoom: get link at lawnchairsoiree@gmail.com, Montreal, Canada
A Night of Mystery and Suspense with Invited Guests: Russell Brooks, Louise Carson, Anne Fotheringham, Patricia Raybon, and Robin Philpot presenting a reading from Richard King’s last novel. We will honour the memory of Richard King at this time. Open Mic, too.

Forms and Frames – A Poetry Workshop
2022-03-17 20:00 - 22:00, 2022-03-24 20:00 - 22:00 | QWF Office, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Room 3, Westmount, QC, H3Z 1X4, Canada
8 Thursdays, 8:00 to 10:00 p.m.
March 17-May 5

Open to all.
Limited to 12 participants

What’s the difference between poetry and prose? One big difference is form—the shapes and sounds a poem makes using line breaks, rhyme, alliteration, and a whole host of other devices. But while it’s a defining component of poetry, form can seem complex and intimidating. Even the most experienced poets may still struggle to distinguish a Pantoum from a Villanelle or accurately parse the metre of a poem.

Thankfully, a complete mastery of form is not necessary to enjoy—or write!—poetry. A basic understanding of form, however, can give the poet a whole new set of tools with which to make their meaning clear.

For many poets, the artificial and sometimes arbitrary rules of formal poetry signal a loss of choice. This workshop aims to show that, on the contrary, the adoption of a form reveals several private decisions around values, preferences, and intent. The “rules” of a form can be followed faithfully, but they can also be rejected, subverted, or broken completely. Those decisions are matter of personal expression, not unlike subject or image, and allow the poet another layer of individuality and disclosure.

Forms and Frames focuses on artificial forms as a means of expression, subversion, and creative generation. Particpants will discuss and practice a small selection of artificial forms from a diverse range of traditions, including the Pantoum, the Haibun, and the Pas-de-Deux. These forms have been chosen specifically because they have (in the Anglo-Canadian context, at least) no set metre. While some small discussion of metre may be necessary during the course of the workshop, no prior knowledge of, or experience with, forms or metres is necessary! Through discussion of these and other artificial forms, guided exercises, free-writing, and voluntary critique, participants of all experience and skill-levels will discover how to make the frame work for them.

Patrick O’Reilly is a writer from Renews, NL, now living in Montreal. A former poetry editor of The Antigonish Review, his poetry and criticism has appeared in Numéro Cinq, untethered, Maisonneuve and others, as well as In/Words Press’s 30 under 30 anthology. Patrick’s first chapbook, A Collapsible Newfoundland, was released by Frog Hollow Press in 2020.

Insider Tips on How to Promote Your Book
2022-03-20 13:00 - 16:00 | Online – Please RSVP
Sunday March 20, 2022 from 1 to 4

This workshop is open to all.

The goal of this three-hour online workshop is to boost writers’ confidence in their own ability to promote their work while having fun and avoiding expensive and time-consuming pitfalls.
You’ll discover that promoting a book does not have to be tedious—it can actually be fun. And you’ll learn why it’s usually a bad idea to send out a press release.
Tommy will provide one very valuable tip on a great way to instantly attract the attention of a journalist or radio show producer. Having been on the receiving end of many pitches as a journalist, reviewer, and talk-show host for many years Tommy knows what works and what doesn’t.
You’ll also get tips on how to avoid spending money on advertising that doesn’t give you enough bang for your buck, and how to easily overcome procrastination using the “Five-by-five” method.
More Insider Tips:

the life-saving napkin
the Double-E method of always using examples and emotions
four crucial words to guide you in any interaction with the media, and
three magic words you can use to improve the quality not only of your publicity but of your writing itself.

Tommy Schnurmacher is an award-winning radio talk-show host and raconteur. The Quebec regional rep for the The Writers Union of Canada, he is the author of Are We on Yet? Insider Secrets of How to be Interviewed and other Essential Media Skills. His latest book, a post-Holocaust memoir titled Makeup Tips from Auschwitz: How Vanity Saved My Mother’s Life, was shortlisted for the 2021 Whistler Independent Book Award. Tommy covered the Academy Awards in L.A. thirteen years in a row, and Meryl Streep once stepped on his toes in Beverly Hills. He spent eight days babysitting for John and Yoko and narrowly avoided a war over the lyrics to Give Peace a Chance.

Website: talkradiotommy.com
Facebook.com/talkradiotommy
Twitter@talkradiotommy
Instagram@talkradiotommy

Intermediate Memoir: The Art of Truth
2022-03-21 18:00 - 20:00, 2022-03-28 18:00 - 20:00 | QWF Office, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Room 3, Westmount, QC, H3Z 1X4, Canada
8 Mondays, 6 to 8 p.m.
March 21 to May 9, 2022
Open to those who have taken at least one writing workshop
Limited to 12 participants.

Memoir, a sub-specialty of autobiography, is a hugely popular form of personal writing. Whereas autobiography is the preserve of celebrities and public figures, memoir usually highlights one period or theme from the life of an ordinary individual, someone with little or no claim to fame. Its special currency is the universality of human experience; its value is what may be learned from a so-called ordinary person.
This workshop on memoir is designed for people who already have some experience of workshop settings and would like to embark or have already begun to embark on a memoir project of their own. Don’t be daunted by the “intermediate” label: you need not necessarily be working on a book-length narrative. If you’re open to learning from a professional practitioner of the genre as well as from your peers, you will almost certainly find this workshop helpful and motivating.
As in any workshop, there is a great emphasis on student input. Participants will not only be presenting their own work to the group but will also be expected to give careful reading of each other’s pieces in order to provide vital critical feedback. This element of the program is equally important to the writing. About half of each session will be devoted to in-class exercises and discussion of selected material from the text named below. The rest of the time will be spent discussing participants’ submissions.
The text for the course is This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett, a work that operates both as a how-to book on writing and as an exemplary series of linked memoirs/personal essays. I expect you to have purchased it ahead of time and to come to the first session prepared to discuss “Nonfiction, an Introduction,” and “How to Read a Christmas Story,” the first two chapters.
I also encourage participants to buy my Bible of clear writing: William Zinsser’s On Writing Well, to which I refer all the time.
To apply, please send an email with the following components to workshops@qwf.org no later than February 24, 2022:
1) a 3-5-page double-spaced writing sample (non-fiction or fiction) that you feel is representative of your abilities.
2) a paragraph introducing yourself and your writing history.
The subject line of the message should read “For Elaine Kalman Naves.”
QWF will notify you whether you’ve been accepted into the workshop the week of March 7.
Elaine Kalman Naves is a long-time literary journalist and the author of seven non-fiction titles, and of a novel. She is a two-time recipient of the Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction, the winner of two Canadian Jewish Book Awards, and of a Canadian Literary Award for Personal Essay. Her memoir Journey to Vaja: Reconstructing the World of a Hungarian-Jewish Family has been made into a documentary film. Elaine’s novel, The Book of Faith, was nominated for the Leacock Prize for Humour. She has led workshops at the QWF since their inception in 1998. To find out more about Elaine, visit her website at http://www.elainekalmannaves.com/

Announcing the Max Margles Fiction Prize Winner
2022-03-28 12:45 - 13:15 | YouTube
The Max Margles Fiction Prize will be awarded to a writer of prose fiction who is a resident of Quebec and whose writing practice is primarily in English. The winner will receive $8,500, the largest such prize to be awarded by any Canadian provincial writers’ organization.

The award is designed to enable one writer to work on a specific solo writing project between April 1 and October 31, 2022. Join us on Monday, March 28 at 12:45 as we introduce the winner!
