Quebec Writers' Federation

Edit like an Editor: How to Edit Your Own Prose
2022-10-06 19:00 - 21:00, 2022-10-13 19:00 - 21:00, 2022-10-20 19:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | Online via Zoom
This workshop is open to all levels of writers who have a prose manuscript they want to work on.

Limited to 12 participants.

This workshop will be conducted via Zoom.

Using tips, tricks, and hands-on exercises, workshop participants will learn about the different types of editing (including developmental editing, line editing, copyediting, and fact checking) and how to see their own work with fresh eyes.

Through reading, discussion, and exercises, this workshop will cover:

How to see your own work with an editor’s eyeSpotting common problems (info dumping, “as you know, Bob” explanations, insufficient conflict, misunderstanding genre conventions, etc.)Understanding character development (goals and motivation)How to make the most out of dialoguePoint of view, and common problems with point of view (e.g. head hopping)

This workshop is geared toward book-length manuscripts, including short story and essay collections. Applicants must submit an excerpt from their manuscript (maximum 25 pages) along with a short description of the whole project in order to be considered for the workshop. After registering below, you have until September 9 to send your document(s) to workshops@qwf.org, with “For Maria Turner” in the subject line.

By the end of the workshop, participants will have an in-depth editorial plan for their manuscript and have a solid understanding of the different types of editing and how to apply them to their own work.

Maria Schamis Turner is a freelance editor specializing in developmental editing and line editing for fiction and creative nonfiction. She is a founding editor and previous editor-in-chief and creative nonfiction editor of the literary magazine carte blanche. She worked for 10 years on literary projects for CBC Radio, including as an editor for Canada Writes. She was also the producer of the true story storytelling series This Really Happened and has taught numerous workshops on storytelling, writing, and editing.

Turneredits.com

Twitter: @turnmaria

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turnmaria

Writing Outside the Box: A Workshop on Edgy Fiction
2022-10-06 20:00 - 22:00, 2022-10-13 20:00 - 22:00, 2022-10-20 20:00 - 22:00 | QWF Office, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Room 3, Westmount, QC, H3Z 1X4, Canada
Open to writers of all experience levels.

Due to the content in some of the exercises, this workshop is restricted to participants aged 18+.

Limited to 12 participants

We plan to hold this workshop in person at the QWF office, with up to two virtual slots available for people who are unable to come to our office. If public health conditions necessitate it, this workshop may transition to a purely online model.

Looking to shake up your process? Interested in breaking the rules a little? Designed to inspire unique approaches to creative writing, this workshop will help squash your inner editor and provoke your inner rebel, giving you the confidence you need to write more openly and honestly.

Over the course of eight weeks, participants will delve into the work of unconventional writers like Italo Calvino, Kelly Link, John Elizabeth Stintzi, and George Saunders. You’ll learn tips and techniques for producing work quickly and fearlessly. You’ll dabble with ekphrasis, magic realism, and second-person perspective, and you’ll hone your ability to give and receive constructive feedback in a wildly creative working environment.

This is a fun, provocative, and productive workshop that’s generated award-winning fiction and long-term friendships. It is suitable for writers of any experience level, from the shy beginner to the established professional, working in any medium or genre. And while filled with lesson-based exercises and guided assignments, this workshop is happily (and willfully) anti-academic. Participants are not taught writing theory but are encouraged to develop their skills through the acts of reading and writing alone. Here, you learn by doing.

There is no submission required prior to the first session. Participants will be expected to share fiction with the group as the workshop progresses.

This is the perfect way to kickstart a project, rejuvenate your existing process, or to simply step outside of your comfort zone by experimenting with new approaches to creativity.

Come play with the weird kids of creative writing. (One of us. One of us.)

Trepassey-born writer Tracey Waddleton splits her time between the island of Newfoundland and the island of Montreal. Her first book, Send More Tourists… the Last Ones Were Delicious, was published by Breakwater Books in July of 2019 and won the 2020 ReLit Award for Short Fiction. She is the inaugural recipient of the Quebec Writers’ Federation Max Margles Writing Residency and is spending/spent the month of August writing in Dublin, Ireland in 2022.

www.traceywaddleton.com

Instagram: @bartlebomb

Twitter: @traceywaddleton

Facebook: www.facebook.com/tracey.waddleton

Shut Up & Write! with QWF
2022-10-08 10:00 - 12:30 | QC
Looking for some dedicated, quiet writing space?

Register below to do all that writing you’ve been meaning to do in the (virtual) company of fellow writers! Using the Pomodoro technique, participants write in 25-minute bursts, with 5 minutes break in between.

This event is for QWF members only. You have to be signed in to the website in order to see the registration options. Not a member? Learn about becoming a member. (Please contact Riley at riley@qwf.org if you are having difficulties registering)

Please note that these sessions are designed for silent writing, rather than discussing or getting feedback on work.

1000 – 1025: Writing 11025 – 1030: Break1030 – 1055: Writing 21055 – 1100: Break1100 – 1125: Writing 31125 – 1130: Break1130 – 1155: Writing 41155 – 1200: Break1200 -1225: Writing 5

Note: Only 12 people are admitted per session. Due to high demand, you must reserve your seat in advance. RSVPs will open exactly one week before each session (i.e., every other Saturday).

A Fate Worse Than Death
2022-10-09 20:00 - 21:00 | Online
A Fate Worse Than Death is a multimodal poetry exploration of disabled life. Often met with the refrain that one would “rather be dead” than disabled, this series of poems instead asks the audience to question what they believe the disabled future holds – and the grief and joy that exist together in it. Written and scored by Nisha Patel, A Fate Worse Than Death is also the poet’s first foray into new media work that expands the bounds of a where spoken word belongs.

Write Over Here: Screenwriting Residency - Fall 2022 | Banff Centre
2022-10-10 08:00 - 2022-10-28 17:00 | Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, 107 Tunnel Mountain Drive, Banff, Alberta, T1L 1H5, Canada
Write Over Here is a three-week hybrid screenwriting residency, that offers participants the opportunity to focus on tools to create the time and space to write from home and at Banff Centre through online and in person programming.
Intermixed with faculty to support their practice as required, participants will meet with the cohort online for the first week, and on campus for the following two weeks. These will include daily gatherings, where we share readings, workshops, deeper discussions around process, and Q&A sessions.
*Financial Aid of up to 100% of tuition fee, meal and accommodation fee is available for this program.

(Un)broken: Leveraging the Poetic Line
2022-10-11 18:00 - 20:00, 2022-10-18 18:00 - 20:00 | QWF Office, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Room 3, Westmount, QC, H3Z 1X4, Canada
Open to all.

Limited to 12 participants.

We plan to hold this workshop in person at the QWF office, with up to two virtual slots available for people who are unable to come to our office. If public health conditions necessitate it, this workshop may transition to a purely online model.

With few exceptions, poets have access to one tool that other writers do not: the line. A defining feature of its genre, the poetic line plays many roles in shaping a poem’s character. The line can serve simultaneously as pacing device, secondary grammar, image container, rhythm driver, and spotlight for sound.

In contemporary free verse, attention is often paid to breaking the line. While valuable, this thinking locates a line’s gravitational pull largely at its end, sometimes excluding other possibilities. Lines, after all, are made as well as broken. And through this making, a poem’s fingerprint takes shape.

This generative poetry workshop offers poets of all levels the chance to develop a broader and more nuanced understanding of how poems derive power from the line’s possibilities—including, but also extending beyond, its breaking. We’ll consider first lines, line integrity, flavours of enjambment, and the line as both sound-vessel and gloss. We’ll also reflect on what happens between lines by thinking about juxtaposition, stanza, and pacing.

Overall, the goal is to support participants in enhancing their free verse at the line level as they generate new work. Participants can expect to draft four to six new poems and have at least one poem workshopped by the group. Early sessions will involve generative writing prompts and craft discussions, while later sessions will focus on workshopping. To anchor our craft discussions, we’ll look at work from a variety of contemporary poets. Writers should bring one of their own poems to the first session as a way of introducing themselves and their work.

Sarah Wolfson is the author of A Common Name for Everything, which won the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Canadian and American journals such as The Walrus, The Fiddlehead, TriQuarterly, Prairie Fire, CV2, Michigan Quarterly Review, and PRISM international. Her work has earned notable mention in Best Canadian Poetry and funding from the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference. She holds an MFA from the University of Michigan. Originally from Vermont, she now lives in Montreal, where she teaches writing at McGill University.

@SarahWolfson1 (Twitter)

https://www.facebook.com/sarah.wolfson.14 (Facebook)

The Art of Writing Speculative Fiction
2022-10-11 20:00 - 22:00, 2022-10-18 20:00 - 22:00 | QWF Office, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Room 3, Westmount, QC, H3Z 1X4, Canada
Open to all.

Limited to 12 participants.

We plan to hold this workshop in person at the QWF office, with up to two virtual slots available for people who are unable to come to our office. If public health conditions necessitate it, this workshop may transition to a purely online model.

Speculative Fiction, a literary genre that can encompass anything from science-fiction and fantasy to magic realism, slipstream, alternate history, horror, steampunk, fairy tales and fables, dystopia, and surrealism, has been with us for as long as we’ve been telling stories. In recent years, it has grown in importance as writing genres continue to cross and blur, and even the most conventional writers of literary fiction experiment with speculative tools as a means to add wonder and power to their tales.

This workshop is open to both new and experienced writers, whether of speculative fiction or of other genres. In each session of this eight-week workshop, we will delve into a different topic and/or element of craft. The sessions will typically include a presentation, examples from the work of experienced writers, an in-depth, participative discussion, and a hands-on exercise. In addition, each participant will have the opportunity to present their own work of speculative fiction—be it a short story or an excerpt from something longer—for detailed discussion and feedback. There will be clear ground rules for workshopping that are designed to ensure that our discussions remain constructive and respectful at all times.

Some of the topics that the workshop will cover include:

What is speculative fiction and what distinguishes it from other types of fiction? What are its special powers and challenges?Questions of content and your story’s four limbs: idea, world, character, plot;Questions of structure and your story’s bones: point-of-view and narration, chronology, tense, tone;Special focus on world-building;Special focus on character-building, voice, and dialogue;What kind of story are you writing? What are you trying to say?How to edit and improve your speculative fiction and prepare it for publication.

Su J Sokol is a social rights advocate and a writer of speculative and interstitial fiction. Originally from Brooklyn, xe now resides in Montréal. Sokol is the author of Cycling to Asylum (2014), long-listed for the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic; Run J Run (2019); and Zee (2020), finalist for the Janet Savage Blachford Prize for Children’s and Young Adult Literature. Sokol’s short work has appeared in various magazines and anthologies. This summer, Sokol’s debut novel was translated into French and published under the title Les lignes invisibles by VLB Imaginaire. Check out Sokol’s website at www.sujsokol.com

Facebook: cyclingtoasylum

Instagram: cycling2asylum

Twitter: cyclingtoasylum

Your Story, Embodied
2022-10-12 18:00 - 20:00, 2022-10-19 18:00 - 20:00 | QWF Office, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Room 3, Westmount, QC, H3Z 1X4, Canada
Open to storytellers of all levels of experience.

Limited to 12 participants.

We plan to hold this workshop in person at the QWF office, with up to two virtual slots available for people who are unable to come to our office. If public health conditions necessitate it, this workshop may transition to a purely online model.

Have you ever sat captivated by a stranger standing on a stage recounting true events from their life? Did you get caught up in the tension of the room, waiting with everyone else to find out what would happen next? Ever wonder what it would be like to hold an audience’s breath in the palm of your hand?

You can. You already have everything you need: your body.

Join Lukas and Emma, two seasoned and engaging storytellers, for eight weeks of exploration into using your body to craft and perform your own true-life stories.

The objectives of this workshop are to:

Equip participants to prepare and perform a five-minute true story with no notes and no props.Facilitate and support exploration of emotionally charged material in search of unique stories.Harness the inherent strength of your body – the vessel for sharing your stories.Examine the tenets of storytelling, including finding your narrative, conflict, and other essential elements of storycraft.

These intimate sessions will involve a mixture of group discussion, critical analysis of stories, and workshopping participants’ own stories with the goal of embodying an original five-minute story for invited guests at the final session. Stories will be workshopped in groups as well as one-on-one with facilitators and fellow workshop participants.

Each week will focus on a particular theme with a corresponding body part, with story examples to support each theme and illustrate the foundations of storytelling. By week 3, participants should have a story in mind that we will work on for the final presentation.

Lukas Rowland is a writer, storyteller, and bodywork practitioner. He has told many stories with Confabulation, where he is producer and communications coordinator. He was selected for the QWF Mentorship Program in 2020, where he studied under Carousel author April Ford as a fiction mentee. He curated and produced an evening of queer stories for the Violet Hour. Though he has lived in and around Montreal these past 14 years, he comes from Southern Louisiana, where storytelling is part of every Cajun’s life. You can find him on Twitter @lukaslikeswords and on Instagram at @luka2ndfloor and at lukasrowland.com.

Emma Lanza is a born-and-bred Montrealer with a background in storytelling, theatre performance, and arts management. She earned her Master’s degree in Library Science and currently works in medical research administration. A self-proclaimed fat bisexual babe, Emma is a staunch believer in fat liberation and radical self-love and she wants you to know you look fabulous in that outfit! She has performed at Confabulation, YARN, The Wiggle Room, Concordia University, and Grownups Read Things They Wrote As Kids. She founded the bi-monthly Fattie Book Club @fattiebookclub and can be found on Instagram @emma_lanza and on Twitter @emmalanza.

Playwriting 101: A Playwriting Intensive
2022-10-12 20:00 - 22:00, 2022-10-19 20:00 - 22:00 | Online via Zoom
Open to all.

Limited to 12 participants.

This workshop will be conducted via Zoom.

Playwriting is an artform about curiosity, obsession, energy, entertainment, transformation, and illumination. It’s about inspiration, dedication, and practice. It’s about following your impulses and shaping those impulses; about creating a series of freedoms and constraints that focus inspiration into a text that can be used as a blueprint for performance. Unlike most other forms of writing, a play text must leave space for other creators to bring their artistry to the work. Director, actors, designers and technicians eventually fill in those spaces left by the writer to transform what is on the page into a three-dimensional performance that necessitates an audience for it to be fully realized. Having written plays that have been staged throughout Canada and beyond (Stratford Festival, Shaw Festival, Soulpepper Theatre, Segal Centre, Centaur Theatre), Erin Shields has developed a number of exercises, strategies and best practices to imagine, explore, and write plays.

Playwriting 101 is an invitation for writers of other genres to try their hand at playwriting and for playwrights to deepen their practice. Throughout this eight-week workshop, participants will bring their own particular understanding of story, character, and theme to the table, to explore how to apply those same skills to the art of playwriting. Each class will focus on one of the following dramatic elements: character, conflict, desire, premise, form, plot, and structure. Through conversations, focused exercises, and sharing work, participants will gain an understanding of how to organically and technically write a play. The process will alternate focus each class between the micro elements (character, dialogue) and macro elements (theme, story structure), as writers gradually learn how to build the world of the play with nuanced characters.

During these eight weeks, participants will write. A lot. By the end of the workshop, writers

will have a strong understanding of the basic elements of a play and how to use those elements to write their own play.

Erin Shields (www.erinshields.ca) is a Canadian playwright. Most of her work highlights the negation or misrepresentation of women in classical texts by adapting these stories through a feminist lens for a contemporary audience. Erin’s adaptation of Paradise Lost premiered at The Stratford Festival of Canada and won the Quebec Writers Federation Prize for Playwriting. Erin won the 2011 Governor General’s Award for her play If We Were Birds, which premiered at Tarragon Theatre. Other theatre credits include: Jane Eyre (Citadel Theatre), Piaf/Dietrich (Mirvish Productions/Segal Centre),The Lady from the Sea (The Shaw Festival). Upcoming productions include Queen Goneril for Soulpepper Theatre and Ransacking Troy for The Stratford Festival.

Facebook: Erin Shields

Instagram: shieldserin1

Website: www.erinshields.ca

The Art of the Short Story
2022-10-13 18:00 - 20:00, 2022-10-20 18:00 - 20:00 | QWF Office, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Room 3, Westmount, QC, H3Z 1X4, Canada
Open to all.

Limited to 12 participants.

We plan to hold this workshop in person at the QWF office, with up to two virtual slots available for people who are unable to come to our office. If public health conditions necessitate it, this workshop may transition to a purely online model.

Open to writers of all levels, this 10-week workshop is an investigation of the modern short story. What exactly is a story? What distinguishes it from an anecdote, or a lie? Most of us recognize a good one when we meet it on the page. It moves us, often unexpectedly, to laughter or tears. And it marks us, reaching inside us and shifting, sometimes subtly and other times with a jolt, our views about ourselves and the world. The best stories articulate truths that we hadn’t, until the moment of reading, thought to put into words.

There is no set of rules for how to write a good story. Each writer has to find their own way, and each story demands fresh experiments. Writing is like living. It requires close listening and relentless improvisation. The best way to learn how to write a good story is to read one. In this workshop, we’ll read “In the Cart” (1897) by Anton Chekhov, and investigate Chekhov’s views about this genre. We’ll also look at his technique: how he used elements like detail, narrative point of view, and speech to create a story strong enough to withstand the tests of time and translation. Over a century after Chekhov’s death, his stories are still read and loved in places totally unlike Czarist Russia. What secrets can his work reveal to us in 21st-century Quebec?

Our first four meetings will be devoted to discussing “In the Cart” (accessible online; also translated as “The Schoolmistress,” and “A Journey by Cart”). Exercises relating to various elements of craft will be offered. The last six meetings will be reserved for workshopping our own stories and continuing the exploration of what exactly a story is, and how to write one.

Claire Holden Rothman is a Montreal writer, translator, and fiction editor who has published two collections of stories and three novels. The Heart Specialist (2009) was long-listed for The Scotia Bank-Giller Prize, and My October was long-listed for the Giller and short-listed for the Governor General’s Award. Her most recent novel, Lear’s Shadow, was short-listed for Quebec’s 2020 Jacob Isaac Segal Award, and won the 2019 Vine Award for Jewish Canadian Fiction. For many years, Claire taught English literature and creative writing at Marianopolis College. She has also taught fiction workshops at McGill and Bishop’s Universities.

The Author Interview: Method and Art
2022-10-15 10:00 - 16:00 | QWF Office, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Room 3, Westmount, QC, H3Z 1X4, Canada
Open to all.

Limited to 12 participants.

We plan to hold this workshop in person at the QWF office, with up to two virtual slots available for people who are unable to come to our office. If public health conditions necessitate it, this workshop may transition to a purely online model.

This two-part workshop will start with a discussion on the methods involved in a lively and thought-provoking author interview. Then, working in pairs, participants will prepare and present an interview, to be followed by an evaluation by the group, with a focus on constructive criticism.

Part One – Morning Session – The Method

10:00 – 11:00 Discussion

how to structure and focus an interviewhow to prepare your questionshow to introduce your guestthe interviewer’s rolehow to deal with questions from the audienceinterviewing several authors at onceshort examples on video of various author interviews–what works and what doesn’t.

11:00-12:00 – Preparing the interview

Workshop participants will break up into pairs and decide on their interview topics; i.e., the participants will plan to interview each other about a book they have written, or about their career as a writer, or about the joys and challenges of the literary life, or some other related topic.

Participants will pre-interview their “teammate” to prepare for the actual 5- to 7-minute interview that will take place during the afternoon session. Participants will finalize the line of questioning for their interviews.

Part Two – Afternoon Session – Putting Theory Into Practice

1:o0 – 3:30 Participants take turns conducting their interviews. On each team, Person A interviews Person B, after which Person B interviews Person A. For example, with 8-10 participants, there will be 4-5 teams, and a total of 8-10 interviews.

After each interview, there will be a 5-minute discussion amongst all participants, with a focus on constructive criticism. Participants will be encouraged to use a method in which they stress the positive, identifying, for example, three aspects of the interview that were successful and one aspect that might be improved or done differently. (Research suggests that once people have received at least three positive comments they are more open to constructive criticism.)

3:30-4:00 pm At the end of the afternoon, there will be a general discussion summing up what the workshop participants learned, what techniques worked, what didn’t, what they would do differently.

Shelley Pomerance is the host of Writers Unbound, a program about Montreal writers and their books, on MAtv. She has been a programmer with Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival and for many years was a presence on CBC Radio as a host and arts reporter.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shelley.pomerance/

Poetry Workshop by John Wall Barger -- Atwater Library
2022-10-15 14:00 - 16:00 | Atwater Library and Computer Centre, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Westmount, Quebec, H3Z 1X4, Canada
Poetry about Places: Workshop by John Wall Barger
Oct 15 | Saturday | 2-4pm
$40 each (includes copy of Barger’s latest book, Smog Mother)
Atwater Library (1200 Atwater Ave, Westmount)
Montreal, Quebec
It’s tricky to write about the places we visit. Travel poems come with a flood of unfortunate expectations: sentimentality, clichés, souvenirs, and so on. How can we refrain from being tourists in our own poems? How can we allow a place to be “real” and “authentic” without projecting our expectations onto it? How, for example, could Paris be anything other than romantic, city of love, beautiful, historical … ? How can we convey, through poems, the complicated, nuanced, wild, deeply personal experience of standing on a street in another city? In this session, you’ll learn some skills that will help you approach this much-trodden road with freshness and innovation. We’ll look at some terrific examples, and you’ll write a few poems of your own.
John Wall Barger’s poems and critical writing have appeared in American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review Online, ZYZZYVA, The Cincinnati Review, Poetry Ireland Review, and Best of the Best Canadian Poetry. His sixth book of poems, Smog Mother, came out with Palimpsest Press in Fall 2022. He is a contract editor for Frontenac House, and teaches in the BFA Program for Creative Writing at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

Words After Dark with Ann-Marie MacDonald
2022-10-16 14:00 - 17:00 | Victoria Hall, 4626 Sherbrooke Street West, Westmount, Quebec, H3Z 2Z8, Canada
Paragraphe Bookstore presents Words After Dark with Ann-Marie MacDonald, and host Eda Holmes, in association with the Westmount Public Library and Penguin Random House of Canada.
Ticket admission for one (1) includes a coupon redeemable for $5 off when you purchase a copy of Fayne — tickets can be picked up at the venue the night of the event. Please show your order confirmation email to retrieve your ticket.

Telling Stories with Zoey Roy
2022-10-16 19:00 - 20:00 | Online
Telling Stories is a podcast that will launch in 2023. It was created and is hosted by rap poet, performance artist, and community activist Zoey Roy. The podcast, produced with Indigenous methodology and structure, invites other artists to an intimate space to speak their own truth and experience, and explore the power storytelling has had on their lives. We will be getting to know Zoey in conversation and exploration of her multimedia creations. Premiering October 2 and October 16 at 4pm PT.

Advanced Memoir: The Second Draft
2022-10-17 18:00 - 20:00, 2022-10-24 18:00 - 20:00 | QWF Office, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Room 3, Westmount, QC, H3Z 1X4, Canada
This workshop on memoir is designed for people who have already studied at the intermediate level with Elaine Kalman Naves. Don’t be daunted by the “advanced” label. If you’ve completed an intermediate workshop with Elaine and are interested in writing, reading, and talking about memoir, you are at a level to benefit from this workshop.

As of now, we plan to host this workshop in-person at the QWF office, with some slots open for remote participation.

Though you need not be working on a book-length narrative, you will be expected to have a specific project in mind. It can be something you were working on in a previous workshop or something entirely new.

During the course of the eight-week workshop, you will have the opportunity to submit a piece of up to 3000 words, and with luck you will have a chance to present a second time. (More details about this once we get rolling.)

Instead of a text, you will have the opportunity to read some fine memoirs, and the long lead-up to this fall workshop will give you a chance to do some advance reading. Please give priority in your summer reading to the terrific memoirs by the four writers who will be guest lecturers over the course of the session. (See below.) Once we have established who the actual workshop participants will be, we will also supply you with a list of suggested optional works to enjoy over the course of the summer.

The emphasis will be 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. As in the past there will also be in-class exercises and discussion of topics of writerly interest. In a new departure, we will start critiquing participants’ pieces at the very first session. Participants who volunteer to present early in the session will be much appreciated! Getting a head start will make it possible to present second drafts. Again, we will work out these details ahead of time once the class list is established.

Here are the names of the guest lecturers and their respective titles:

Mark Abley, The Organist

Linda Leith, The Girl from Dream City

Harriet Alida Lye, Natural Killer

Robyn Sarah, Music, Late and Soon

And please don’t forget that William Zinsser’s On Writing Well is useful to have as a reference at your fingertips!

To apply, please send the following to riley@qwf.org no later than July 6, 2022.

A 3- to 5-page double-spaced writing sample (nonfiction or fiction) that you feel is representative of your abilities.A paragraph or two outlining the writing project you plan to pursue in the workshop.

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 athttp://www.elainekalmannaves.com/

Writing About Trauma (Without Being Super Annoying)
2022-10-17 20:00 - 22:00 | QWF Office, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Room 3, Westmount, QC, H3Z 1X4, Canada
Open to all.

Limited to 12 participants

We plan to hold this workshop in person at the QWF office, with up to two virtual slots available for people who are unable to come to our office. If public health conditions necessitate it, this workshop may transition to a purely online model.

There was a time when bad things would happen to me, and I would be like, this is so terrible, my life is so awful. Then, I became a writer. Now, when bad things happen to me, I think: this kind of thing is so awful… for people who are not writers. This is going to make such a good essay.

Being a writer is a superpower. Writers are often uniquely sensitive, which can make us vulnerable — but that sensitivity, when channelled appropriately, can turn into our greatest strength. When we learn to transmute our challenging, painful, and even traumatic experiences into art, we learn a very real kind of invulnerability: a capacity to spin agony into gold, a way in which we are always safe, always on top, and can always have the last word. At its best, this skill can allow us to wrest power back from our worst experiences and literally pave a road to fame, fortune, healing, and transcendence. There are, however, a few essential skills we must learn along the way.

In this eight-week workshop, Montreal-based poet and nonfiction writer Tara McGowan-Ross will take the participants on a journey through their shadows, mistakes, betrayals, and heartbreaks, towards the end of creating a powerful and transformative piece of work. She will cover subjects ranging from basic critical thinking and how to apply it, to how to create a safe container for your difficult feelings, to the ethics of writing nonfiction, which inevitably includes other people with opinions and boundaries — to injecting the kind of skill, humour, and humanity required of a work so that it may avoid the most common pitfall of writing trauma narratives: being, like, super annoying.

Tara McGowan-Ross is an urban Mi’kmaw multidisciplinary artist and writer. She graduated from Concordia University’s philosophy program with a minor in Creative Writing in 2016. She is the author of poetry collections Girth and Scorpion Season, and the memoir Nothing Will Be Different. She has served on numerous editorial boards, including Goose Lane’s Icehouse imprint, and has been anthologized in Best Canadian Poetry and Anthologie de la poésie actuelle des femmes au Québec. She lives in Montreal, where she is a theatre critic, a rebel educator, a Substack columnist, and the host of Drawn & Quarterly’s Indigenous Literatures Book Club.

girthgirl.ca

taramcgowanross.substack.com

@girthgirl (Instagram/Twitter)

Reading by Neil Smith at Dawson College
2022-10-20 14:00 - 15:00 | QC
Montreal writer Neil Smith will read from his darkly comic new novel Jones on Thursday, Oct. 20 at 2 p.m. in room 5B.16, with a special opening act—a Dawson student reading from their creative work.
Smith will also give a short talk and participate in a Q&A. This event is free and open to the public.

Writing Picture-Book Biographies: Where to Begin?
2022-10-22 10:00 - 12:30 | QWF Office, 1200 Atwater Avenue, Room 3, Westmount, QC, H3Z 1X4, Canada
Open to all.

Limited to 12 participants.

We plan to hold this workshop in person at the QWF office, with up to two virtual slots available for people who are unable to come to our office. If public health conditions necessitate it, this workshop may transition to a purely online model.

Thinking of jumping on the picture-book biography bandwagon? Better yet, you already have someone in mind to write about but you don’t know where to start? Come down the research rabbit hole with Anne Renaud, as she shares the steps she takes to lift the veil on the lives of people – from birth to grave and everything in between.

The two-and-a-half-hour workshop will look at the different approaches in picture-book biographies and provide answers to such questions as:

What biographical information should I leave in and what can I leave out?How and where do I go to track down surviving family members? Newspaper clippings? Genealogical information? Photographs? Patents?The back matter is no laughing matter–what do I include? Do I need a research grant to write my book? If so, where do I go for grant money?How and to whom can I pitch my manuscript?

Handouts will be distributed. Participants are also encouraged to send Anne specific questions they would like answered prior to the workshop date (send your questions to riley@qwf.org, with “Question for Anne Renaud” in the subject line).

Suggested reading before workshop:

The Boy Who Invented the Popsicle: The Cool Science Behind Frank Epperson’s Famous Frozen Treat by Anne RenaudMr. Crum’s Potato Predicament by Anne RenaudThe True Tale of a Giantess: The Story of Anna Swan by Anne RenaudBloom: A story of fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli by Kyo MaclearOn our way to Oyster Bay: Mother Jones and her march for children’s rights by Monica KullingJoan Procter, dragon doctor: The woman who loved reptiles by Patricia ValdezJosephine by Patricia Hruby Powell

Anne Renaud is an award-winning children’s author who writes in both French and English. Her publications feature picture books for four-to-eight-year-olds and historical non-fiction books for nine- to-twelve-year-olds. Her picture-book biographies include Ferdinand Cheval: The Postman who Delivered a Palace; The True Tale of a Giantess: The Story of Anna Swan; The Boy Who Invented the Popsicle: The Cool Science Behind Frank Epperson’s Famous Frozen Treat; and Mr. Crum’s Potato Predicament, which won the 2018 QWF Prize for Children’s and YoungAdult Literature. Anne is also a regular contributor to children’s magazines, such as Highlights, Pockets, Cricket, Orbit, Spider,and Faces.

Additional information on Anne’s publications can be found on her website at http://annerenaud.net/

You can also find Anne on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064131728787

QWF Member Meetup
2022-10-22 14:00 - 17:00 | Mordecai Richler Gazebo, 4060 Park Ave, Montreal, Quebec, H2W 1S8, Canada
The Quebec Writers’ Federation is inviting members and friends for a social event at the Mordecai Richler Gazebo on October 22 Saturday, 2pm

It has been a busy year for English writers in Quebec: Our writing workshops filled up quickly; this year’s QWF Awards received more submissions than ever before, and the team is preparing our first fully in-person Awards Gala since 2019.

We want to celebrate our successes with the greater literary community, while lso introducing a new batch of QWF members. Please join us on October 22, Saturday, at 2:00 p.m. at the Mordecai Richler Gazebo, Parc du Mont-Royal, 4060 Park Avenue. Light refreshments will be provided, but please bring your own drinks.

Catch up with old friends and make new ones!

Bring a Buddy! This event is free for both QWF members and the public. QWF staff and board members will be present to answer questions about the organization. We are always happy to welcome new folks into the organization.

The Sixty-Second Spotlight. Inspired by ELAN’s Minute Market, QWF members who want to promote their recent work (book, play, etc.) will be given exactly sixty seconds to pitch it to the entire group! Interested in participating? It’s free, but you have to bring a door prize (a copy of your book, for example) to the event. Email Riley (riley@qwf.org) to be put on the presenting list.

+ SURPRISES! +

DATE: SATURDAY, OCTOBER 22 AT 2:00 PM

RAIN DATE: SUNDAY, OCTOBER 23 AT 2:00 PM

Whale Fall by Ann Lambert Book Launch
2022-10-23 14:00 - 16:00 | Librairie Paragraphe Bookstore, 2220 McGill College Ave, Montreal, Quebec, H3A 3P9, Canada
Join us at the launch of Whale Fall , the third book in Ann Lambert’s Russell and Leduc mystery series, where Marie Russell and Detective Roméo Leduc are finally getting married. However, the joyous occasion is overshadowed by the unexpected arrival of Magnus Sørenson, renowned eco-warrior and Marie’s first great love. When Magnus’ plans for a dramatic environmental protest take a dark turn, Roméo and Marie are forced to abandon their honeymoon in the Laurentians in order to catch a killer, unearthing long-buried secrets along the way. Fast-paced and chilling, Whale Fall is a riveting tale of love, vengeance and climate justice.
Hosted by Ann’s daughter, playwright Alice Abracen. There will be a reading and a Q & A !
Praise for Whale Fall:
“[Ann Lambert] has produced her third stunning murder mystery after The Birds That Stay and The Dogs of Winter, combining terrific whodunits with subtle messages of social justice and marvellous characterization… Whale Fall is a rare reminder that just one murder is a tragedy; you don’t need bloodshed and gore and gunfire to have a crackerjack of a story.” —Nick Martin, Winnipeg Free Press
“This series gets better with every book; warm hearted, well-plotted, and with a wonderful sense of place. I can’t wait for the next one. It felt like catching up with old friends.” —Ann Cleeves, internationally best-selling author of the Vera Stanhope, Shetland and Two Rivers series.
