Week 1: July 6-11 (for ages 12-14)
Artful: Ignite your Imagination with Jenne Newman
Jenne is an Art Therapist who works with children, youth and families in Calgary, AB. It was her interest in Fine Arts and Psychology that led her to a Master’s of Creative Arts Therapy. Jenne has over ten years’ experience in creating and facilitating artful workshops, groups and presentations focused on using art to make meaning. She is a creative being who loves experiencing her world through the visual arts. Jenne enjoys photography, nature, quiet moments and discovering the wonders of the world with her family.
Course Description
What happens when we move from painting to poetry to printmaking to prose?Let’s go on a journey of lost and found: lost in our imaginations, found meaning in words; lost creative inhibitions and found inspiration. We will explore and experiment with multiple art mediums including, photography, painting, printmaking, collage and clay using nature, images and story for inspiration. Then we will use our own images to build stories, poetry and bring words to our visual creations.Come discover what we find when we get lost in our creative process and ignite our imaginations through the visual arts!
Imaginary Beings with Cathy Ostlere
Cathy Ostlere writes YA, creative nonfiction, poetry, drama and film. She grew up in an Air Force family and credits long drives across the country for an overactive imagination. Her YA verse novel Karma was the 2012 R. Ross Annett Children’s Award winner and shortlisted for the 2012 City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Award. Her play, Lost: A Memoir, was a finalist for a 2012 Governor General’s Award for Drama. Cathy lives in Calgary and takes great delight in driving Alberta highways. Her website is: www.cathy-ostlere.com.Course DescriptionThroughout history, writers, storytellers and bards have told the tales of wild and fabulous beasts. The Banchee – a fairy woman who foretells death; the Carbuncle – a small animal with a precious jewel in its head; the green Shaggy Beast of La Ferté-Bernard who survived the Great Flood though excluded from the Ark. Or how about the Kraken – a sea dragon; or an Odradek that lurks in stairways? And then there are the Morlocks who climb out of their caverns and feed on the Eloi! In this course we will explore the fantastic animals of literature and then create our own monster/being to use in a fantastic story.
Acting up with Kim McCullough
Kim McCullough is a junior high Language Arts and Drama teacher from Calgary. She will complete her MFA in Creative Writing in 2014. Her first novel, Clearwater was recently published by Coteau Books. Kim is a past instructor at the Fernie Writers’ Conference, and will be leading the Sage Hill Teen Writing Experience in Saskatchewan in July. Kim is excited to be working with the team at Wordsworth, and can’t wait to meet the students!
Course Description
Improve your storytelling, dialogue and characterization through improvisation and other acting techniques. In this workshop, you will learn to create dramatic stories by using skits and acting exercises to plot scenes, create realistic dialogue, and incorporate proven oral story-telling approaches in your writing before you even put pencil to paper.
What do you want? With Jani Krulc
Jani Krulc has an M.A. in English from Concordia University and a B.A. (Hons) from the University of Calgary. Her first book, a collection of short stories called The Jesus Year, was published in the spring of 2013 by Insomniac Press. Jani is an alumna of the Banff Centre’s Writing with Style program, and the former fiction editor of filling Station magazine. She lives in Calgary with her partner and their animals.
Course Description
We’re all driven by desire. Are your characters? Rich description and fast action only get you so far – sometimes a story goes nowhere because your characters don’t want anything. We will learn how to push plot and shape stories by focusing on what our characters really want – anything from a chocolate bar to fame and fortune will do. And we’ll create a compelling cast in the meantime.
Shaping the Story with Naomi Lewis
Songwriting workshop with Kris Demeanor
Calgary born songwriter Kris Demeanor delights in exposing the underbelly of western Canadian culture- gambling, drug use, murder, religion, the suburbs. His numerous CDs of original work explore the darkness and absurdity of these corners of Alberta life. He draws on dense spoken word, folk, and shamelessly hooky pop for audiences who like to be taken on unexpected journeys.
While Kris’s music has taken him around the world performing with his Crack Band, Kris has also become a fixture of Calgary’s spoken word, literary and theatre worlds, creating music and lyric for numerous projects.
Career highlights include taking the award winning short film based on his song ‘I Have Seen the Future’ to the Sundance and Toronto film festivals, collaborationg with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra on the 2011 event ‘Acres of Dreams’, and sharing a beer with David Byrne.
He has recently been named the first Poet Laureate of the City of Calgary.
Course Description
Words, I’d like you to meet music. Music, words. For the next 3 and half to four minutes, we invite you to surf on each other’s energy, embark on a union of sweet syncopation; make the world dance, laugh, think and cry. And…go!
Songs are one of the ultimate ways to tell a story, reveal your emotions, rant and rave against the cruel world, get lost in a feeling only the marriage of rhythm, melody, and lyric can deliver. Together we’re going to search for your individual musical voice, get inspiration wherever it finds you- in the madness of the city, the awesomeness of nature, the depths of your heart, the stories of your family history, but mostly, from your wild imaginations.
Every session we will spend time getting to know an instrument. You can stick with one instrument the whole time, or switch every day. You don’t need any previous experience. Your instrument might be your voice. We’ll jam as a group, improvising rhythm and melody ideas on the spot, feeding off of each other’s ideas. We’ll work simultaneously on a group song that evolves over the week and create a bunch of other songs, either individually or in duos.
If you want to rehearse and perform your songs, fantastic. If you want to be a solitary genius who releases demo recordings under different aliases, great.
We’ll work on the basics of songwriting and performance- keeping a beat, finding harmonies, constructing songs with melodic hooks and lyrical clarity. Part of finding your own voice as a songwriter will be exploring the music that inspires you, and trying songs in a lot of different genres: spoken word, ferocious rap, heart smashing ballads, gentle folk songs, garage rockers, Broadway musical show tunes!
Songs are everywhere- cars, malls, buses, homes, schools, movies, festivals, outer space. Our lives are scored by one long, continuous soundtrack. Add to the playlist with your own gorgeous four minute (potentially viral) musical sensation.
Action Scenes with Kim Firmston
Kim Firmston is a real life mutant – though one without any cool powers. When she is not writing or cursing obvious villain mistakes, she warps young minds in her Reality is Optional Kid’s Writing Club, and DramAntics Youth Theatre Camp. Kim has written five YA books and had her plays produced in both Canada and the USA. She’s made three interactive websites and has been known to build diabolical devices out of cardboard and old chip bags with big DO NOT PUSH buttons on them. Kim doesn’t sleep and is always busy. You can see all her projects at www.kimfirmston.com, www.boiledcat.com, andwww.realityisoptional.weebly.
Course Description
Action scenes are some of the hardest things to write. It’s difficult to keep track of all the players, explain what’s happening, keep the tension high, and maintain that heart stopping drama. In this class we will not only learn write and film action scenes, we will live them using stalking games, large multi-player battles, and even disarming “bombs” to physically bring it all to life.
Understanding and Creating Comics with Sebastien Ringuette
Sebastien Ringuette is a British/French-Canadian crossbreed that successfully reached maturity in the harsh (although friendly) climate of Western Canada. His mission has always been to create entertaining content in some form or another, and has been publishing his cartooning work online since 2007. He is the creator of multiple online web comics (Exploding Wumpus, The Aversion Bureau and Gamer Roommates) and has self published two collections of such work which he barters off during his annual appearances at the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo. In the ephemeral free time he has between meeting cartooning deadlines and preparing for conventions, Sebastien works as a free-lance designer and artist whose work can be seen in projects like the award-winning Canadian web series Space Janitors. All of Sebastien’s current projects and comic work can be found through his website The Aversion Bureau. (aversionbureau.com)
Course Description
Enter the world of comics and be forced to choose between the two no longer! Comics, or “Sequential Art”, are the quintessential amalgamation of drawing and writing that doesn’t require you to be a master of either. Learn how to create your own comics from character design and pacing, to structure and script-writing. Develop and discover the artistic styles of a cartoonist, your inner comedian, and how to love your own work. Learn how to self-publish your works and how to bring them to the world! Cartooning is a world of trial and error, expect to spend as much time writing and drawing as possible. Occasionally we pause to breath.
Thank you for your collaboration with Paul Zits
Paul Zits received his MA in English from the University of Calgary in 2010, completing his creative thesis, Massacre Street (UAP 2013) under the supervision of experimental Canadian poet Christian Bök. Since, he has served two terms as Writer-in-the-Schools at Queen Elizabeth High School in Calgary, teaching Creative Writing to students in the Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) program. Zits is the editor and publisher of the Calgary-based small-press 100 têtes Press and the Managing Editor of filling Station. This is his second year teaching at the WGA’s WordsWorth Camp
Course Description
“Poetry should be made by all, not by one.”
– Isidore Ducasse
Does writing need to be a solitary practice? For practitioners of collaborative writing, coauthoring becomes a highly liberating endeavour, while at the same time pushing the writer’s imagination and mastery of language. This course will teach the fundamental techniques of the craft of poetry while at the same time introducing students to the practice of collaborative writing. Whether exploring Japanese renga (linked poems) or the collective poems of the Surrealists, this course is about experimentation. Students will also have an opportunity to explore contemporary examples of collaborative texts, discovering how unique works can come from joint efforts.
Week 2: July 13-19 (for ages 15-19)
Write the Wild with Lyndsie Bourgon
Lyndsie writes creative non-fiction for magazines and newspapers from her home in Calgary, and has worked as an editor for various newspapers, magazines and websites. She has written for publications including The Walrus, the Globe and Mail, Slate, Maisonneuve and Corporate Knights, and her reporting has taken her around the world–from Botswana to Cuba to Haida Gwaii, British Columbia. Last fall she was chosen to take part in the Banff Centre’s Mountain and Wilderness Writing workshop.
Course Description
Free your mind from the city! This class uses Kamp Kiwanis’s amazing location to inspire your writing. Outdoor excursions, flowery readings and wild assignments will help us bring nature’s inspiration into our work.
JUST MY TYPE with derek beaulieu
Derek is the author or editor of 15 books, the most recent of which are Please, No more poetry: the poetry of derek beaulieu (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2013) and kern (Les Figues press, 2014). He is the publisher of the acclaimed no press and is the visual poetry editor at UBUWeb. Beaulieu has exhibited his work across Canada, the United States and Europe and currently teaches at the Alberta College of Art + Design.
Course Description
Screenwriting for Reals and Acting for Fun! With Renée St. Cyr
Renée St. Cyr is a screenwriter and story editor. Co-founding Spry Productions with Michael Margolis, they went on to write two demo-pilots that were optioned and produced. She is currently working as the in-house feature film story editor out of the Toronto-based production company, HLP. She began her career in prose, writing a novel that gained her a place at the Banff Centre’s Writing Studio. She thinks prose rocks, but (like those who love Death Polo for the rush) the awesome collaboration that is required in film and TV gets Renée jacked (not jacked like someone who has huge arms and will hurt you while playing Death Polo, but like someone who is excited about life). She hopes that she can simulate this experience of collaboration with the Wordsworthians that participate in her course (and so…get huge arms, but from writing).
Course Description
Yo. Do you like to write? (obvie) Do you like to act? If you said, “YES!” then just sign up for this course and stop reading. If you said, “Nooooooooooooo, acting, nooooooooo,” it doesn’t matter. It’s not like real acting, you won’t have to Romeo and Juliet yourself into intense euphoric oblivion…you will just have to read what you and others write OUT LOUD. This is called a table read. When screenwriters have a script they are mildly satisfied with, they call on buddies (maybe actors) to read it while sitting around a table. During the read, it becomes pretty obvious what scenes and dialogue seem to work and what doesn’t. It’s also an opportunity to workshop lines. If something is intended to be funny, is it the line? Is it the pacing? Is it the tone? By reading it out loud, you can ask some of these questions and explore it with the group. During the course, we will use writing and acting exercises to inspire and guide us. I will teach basic film structure, which applies to a three-page scene as much as it applies to an hour-and-a-half length feature film. So! WOOOOOO! Let’s collaborate and help each other with our ideas so that we can learn about writing and learn about how to live meaningful lives by connecting to the art of storytelling!!! (also known as, Wordsworth camp) See you then!
Short and Sweet with Sandy Pool
Sandy Pool is a writer, editor and Creative Writing instructor. Sandy has two published books of poetry: Exploding Into Night with Guernica Editions and Undark: An Oratorio with Nightwood Editions. Her work has been translated into three languages and is currently being adapted for television and theatrical performance. Her work has also been nominated for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry, The Trillium Book Award and an Alberta Book Award. Currently, she divides her time between Toronto and Montreal and Is the holder of the prestigious Killam scholarship in poetics at the University of Calgary, where she is completing her Phd.
Course Description
Do you like long boring stories? How about extra long boring stories? No? You don’t? Good. Me neither. In this course, students will explore the dynamic genre of Flash Fiction. Using various writing techniques and writing exercises, students will learn to write succinct, action-packed stories in a page (or hopefully less!) If you love to write, but hate writing 5-page descriptions of trees blowing in the wind, then this course is meant for you! Learn how to edit your fiction and transform it into something super short and super sweet!
Spoken Word with Sheri-D Wilson
Called the Mama of Dada – Sheri-D Wilson is a Poet , Playwright, Filmmaker, Producer
Sheri-D has 9 collections of poetry – she won the 2006 Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry, and was shortlisted for a CanLit Award. She has 2 CD’s and 4 VideoPoems. In 2009 she was called one of the top ten poets in Canada by CBC. In 2003 she won the USA Heavyweight title for poetry and in 2006 she was awarded the National Slam of Canada Poet of Honour. Her short film Spinsters Hanging in Trees won 3 AMPIA awards and 2 ACE awards. Sometimes called the Godmother of Spoken Word she is the Artistic Director of the Calgary Spoken Word Festival, was Founder/Director of The Spoken Word Program @ The Banff Centre, and editor of The Spoken Word Workbook: inspiration from poets who teach.
Course Description
Action Scenes with Kim Firmston
Kim Firmston is a real life mutant – though one without any cool powers. When she is not writing or cursing obvious villain mistakes, she warps young minds in her Reality is Optional Kid’s Writing Club, and DramAntics Youth Theatre Camp. Kim has written five YA books and had her plays produced in both Canada and the USA. She’s made three interactive websites and has been known to build diabolical devices out of cardboard and old chip bags with big DO NOT PUSH buttons on them. Kim doesn’t sleep and is always busy. You can see all her projects at www.kimfirmston.com, www.boiledcat.com, andwww.realityisoptional.weebly.
Course Description
Writing the World (in here) with Marcello DiCintio
Instructor Marcello Di Cintio is the author of three books of creative nonfiction including, most recently, Walls: Travels Along the Barricades. Marcello also writes for magazines such as The Walrus, Canadian Geographic, The New York Times, and Afar. He is a former writer-in-residence with the Calgary Distinguished Writers Program and the Palestine Writing Workshop. Marcello used to be a wrestler, but his wrestling skills don’t make him any better at Death Polo.
Course Description
The real world is generous with stories and is filled with characters in need of an author. Who needs to make anything up? Step away from alternative dimensions for a brief holiday in reality. In both of Marcello’s creative nonfiction courses, writers will weave true stories into artful narratives.
Participants will turn their observer eyes inward in Marcello’s Week 3 course, Writing the World (In Here). In this workshop, writers will mine their own real life experiences for stories. We will explore the genres of memoir, travelogue, and personal journalism – all while transforming ourselves, and the people we know, into compelling characters.
Writing from the Gut with Jani Krulc
Jani Krulc has an M.A. in English from Concordia University and a B.A. (Hons) from the University of Calgary. Her first book, a collection of short stories called The Jesus Year, was published in the spring of 2013 by Insomniac Press. Jani is an alumna of the Banff Centre’s Writing with Style program, and the former fiction editor of filling Station magazine. She lives in Calgary with her partner and their animals.
Course Description
Forget what the story is supposed to be “about” and learn to explore the unknown.Fight the impulse to collect ideas and plan out stories – the best narratives are the ones that surprise us, the writers. In this course, we will learn what it feels like to listen to our impulses and to discover the narratives we really want to write.
Crawl Inside the Skin of Your Character with Emily Ursuliak
Emily Ursuliak Emily Ursuliak grew up in the rolling hills southwest of Bentley, Alberta, but now calls Calgary home. She is the current fiction editor for filling Station, Canada’s experimental literary magazine and an executive producer for the literary radio show Writer’s Block. She recently completed an MA in English at the University of Calgary where she’s been working on her first novel, Not as She is and her first collection of poems, The Diamond Hitch. You can find her work in Warpaint, Wax: Poetry and Art, Blue Skies Poetry and the upcoming anthology The Calgary Project: A City Map in Verse and Visual.
Course Description
Sometimes when a story isn’t coming out quite the way we want the problem is that main character of ours. We thought we knew who this person was when we started writing about them, but do we really? This class is about unzipping that character, stepping inside and figuring out just what makes them tick. Each day of this workshop we will approach a different aspect of developing our characters through writing exercises and discussions. You are welcome to unzip a character from a story you’re already working on, but you’ll also be guided through the process of developing a character from the ground up. You’ll come away from this workshop with a tool kit for creating unique, believable and engaging characters that will pull readers into your stories. When you write as these characters you will feel as though you’re living within them like some kind of literary parasite experiencing the world through their particular set of eyes.
Week three: July 20-25, 2014 (ages 14-19) *NEW*
Let’s Write a Short Film with Renée St. Cyr
Renée St. Cyr is a screenwriter and story editor. Co-founding Spry Productions with Michael Margolis, they went on to write two demo-pilots that were optioned and produced. She is currently working as the in-house feature film story editor out of the Toronto-based production company, HLP. She began her career in prose, writing a novel that gained her a place at the Banff Centre’s Writing Studio. She thinks prose rocks, but (like those who love Death Polo for the rush) the awesome collaboration that is required in film and TV gets Renée jacked (not jacked like someone who has huge arms and will hurt you while playing Death Polo, but like someone who is excited about life). She hopes that she can simulate this experience of collaboration with the Wordsworthians that participate in her course (and so…get huge arms, but from writing).
Course Description
In this course, we will explore story structure and writing dialogue. I will assist with exercises to inspire your writing, and by the end of the week…you will have written a short film! Short films are usually around ten minutes, but they can be shorter or longer. Through discussions of story structure, it will give you a general template to explore your character and the journey that he/she/it embarks on. By gaining an understanding of a classic narrative arc, you can decide what to keep and what to toss. If you want this workshop to be your opportunity to write a conceptual art film, do it! But…you will still learn about structure. I love story structure; it’s helped me to analyze scripts when something is just not working. It’s something fall back on. Kind of like having night vision goggles when the power goes out. Screw candles. They’re dangerous, anyway.*
*Candles are responsible for 3% of Canadian household fires.
Editing Workshop with Lyndsie Bourgon
Lyndsie writes creative non-fiction for magazines and newspapers from her home in Calgary, and has worked as an editor for various newspapers, magazines and websites. She has written for publications including The Walrus, the Globe and Mail, Slate, Maisonneuve and Corporate Knights, and her reporting has taken her around the world–from Botswana to Cuba to Haida Gwaii, British Columbia. Last fall she was chosen to take part in the Banff Centre’s Mountain and Wilderness Writing workshop.
Course Description
Sign up for an editing session in a small group of your fellow writers. Tackle your poems, stories and songs line by line and learn how editing can make your writing even better. Trust me, editing doesn’t have to be a chore. We’ll go through some tips and tricks, and work together to make your work at WordsWorth the best that it can be.
The Art of the Monologue with Brendan McLeod
Brendan McLeod has been a Wordsworth instructor for quite some time — going on nearly a decade (phew, he’s old). He’s a novelist, playwright, and musician, who has performed over 400 shows in the past 5 years. He was the 2012 poet of honor at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word, and his folk group The Fugitives have been nominated for a Canadian Folk Music Award. His one hour monologue “The Fruit Machine” was funded by the Canada Council, toured across the country, and was featured in various media outlets, including CBC’s DNTO.
Course Description
This class explores how to tell your stories to an audience. Everyone has something amazing/funny/heartwrenching/terrible happen to them. Some of us like to share it with the wider public. The question is how to do this in a way that places your audience inside the moment. That makes them feel like it is happening to them. That makes them be like, “Holy Crap. I’d never thought of it that way, but now that I have, the whole universe seems to make sense!” We’ll explore how to do all this, as well as how to have fun on stage, and get to know your inner storyteller.
Creative Flow and The Writer’s Voice with David Wilson
David Wilson (B.Mus, M.Mus) is a Singer, Conductor, Voice Teacher, Yoga Instructor, Breath Therapist, and soon-to-be-author. He is recognized across Canada as a leading authority on the use of yoga and breath therapy to aid proper singing technique. He has most recently conducted Mikado and RENT, and sung in Into the Woods. David currently teaches for Grant MacEwan Theatre Arts, Edmonton Musical Theatre and the University of Alberta. At his Edmonton teaching studio David offers Professional Voice Lessons, Functional Vocal Transformation, Empowerment & Confidence Training, Performance Tuning, Creative Flow Work and Body, Breath & Voice Integrative Therapy. He tours regularly, offering workshops to singers, actors, teachers and professionals on vocal power and respiratory health. David is also THRILLED to be returning to Wordsworth! He is currently working on two books: The Wilson Technique of Singing, Body Breath & Voice Integrative Therapy, and a DVD, Yoga for Singers. His website is body-breath-voice.com.
Course Description
“Creative Flow and The Writer’s Voice”
In this class we will explore a series of artistic and fun disciplines, and then observe the empowering directions these activities take our writing. Movement, breathing, meditation, drama games, yoga and vocal exploration will lead toward our goals of increased confidence, awareness, and creativity. Also included is a text-driven musical soundscape performance, written by YOU, geared toward listening, community and team building.
Exploding the Story with Emily Ursuliak
Emily Ursuliak grew up in the rolling hills southwest of Bentley, Alberta, but now calls Calgary home. She is the current fiction editor for filling Station, Canada’s experimental literary magazine and an executive producer for the literary radio show Writer’s Block. She recently completed an MA in English at the University of Calgary where she’s been working on her first novel, Not as She is and her first collection of poems, The Diamond Hitch. You can find her work in Warpaint, Wax: Poetry and Art, Blue Skies Poetry and the upcoming anthology The Calgary Project: A City Map in Verse and Visual.
Course Description
At some point in time someone came up with a definition of what a story is and what it couldn’t be. Just think of all of the potential storytelling methods that we could be missing out on by holding onto this limited view of what stories are. What if a story was told through a grocery list, or through the forms patients fill out in emergency rooms? What if the story broke out of the structure of paragraphs, left behind its prescribed margins and began exploring the space of a page on its own terms? What if the story left the page altogether and took up residence in a physical space, or if it asked to return to its oral roots and we found it spread throughout the forest as a chorus of voices? Do you know that line that we draw for plot diagrams in school? We’re going to take that line and instead of labelling it, we’re going to treat it as a fuse. We’ll light one end of it on fire and see what happens
Writing the World (Out There) with Marcello DiCintio
Instructor Marcello Di Cintio is the author of three books of creative nonfiction including, most recently, Walls: Travels Along the Barricades. Marcello also writes for magazines such as The Walrus, Canadian Geographic, The New York Times, and Afar. He is a former writer-in-residence with the Calgary Distinguished Writers Program and the Palestine Writing Workshop. Marcello used to be a wrestler, but his wrestling skills don’t make him any better at Death Polo.
Course Description
The real world is generous with stories and is filled with characters in need of an author. Who needs to make anything up? Step away from alternative dimensions for a brief holiday in reality. In both of Marcello’s creative nonfiction courses, writers will weave true stories into artful narratives.
In Writing the World (Out There), participants will dabble in narrative journalism. We will seek out true stories beyond our own experience, and respond to the worlds of science, nature, history, current events and pop culture with writer’s eyes. There will be no dry reporting here, however. We are storytellers and artists, after all. Participants will craft literary stories from the world out there.
Writing Yourself Out of the Box: A Workshop in Spoken Word Poetry; An Experiment in CreativityMary Pinkoski
Mary Pinkoski is an award-winning spoken word poet from Edmonton. She is currently Edmonton’s Poet Laureate. In 2013 she placed third at the Canadian Individual Poetry Slam Championship. In 2011, she won the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word national slam championship as captain of the Edmonton slam team. She was also voted Most Valuable Poet of that festival. In 2008 Mary was the winner of the national CBC Poetry Face-off. When not performing across North America, Mary leads workshops for youth and adults. She is currently creating a full-length spoken word show called Land in the Veins. For more information visit: www.marypinkoski.com.
Course Description
You are in a box. Not a real box. But a box, nonetheless. The good news: you have the tools to write yourself out of that box into a new, unexplored borderland. The flexibility of spoken word poetry and its adherence to the rule that there are no rules, is something that puts it outside the box as a writing form. Over this week, we will experiment and play with words. Take leaps in creativity and have fun writing ourselves outside the box, and then seeing what happens when we have broken free. Come prepared to write each day and read some of that writing out loud. Come prepared to interrogate your writing and unleash your creativity.
The Horror with Cathy Ostlere
Cathy Ostlere writes YA, creative nonfiction, poetry, drama and film. She grew up in an Air Force family and credits long drives across the country for an overactive imagination. Her YA verse novel Karma was the 2012 R. Ross Annett Children’s Award winner and shortlisted for the 2012 City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Award. Her play, Lost: A Memoir, was a finalist for a 2012 Governor General’s Award for Drama. Cathy lives in Calgary and takes great delight in driving Alberta highways. Her website is: www.cathy-ostlere.com.
Course Description
The horror story is an enduring genre that’s been around since Prometheus stole a spark from Zeus’s lightning bolt and the campfire was invented. In this course we’ll examine the horror story forms of Greek myth, German fairytales, famous monsters and ghosts of literature, and wild urban legends. Each class we’ll write short, terrifying narratives. Don’t walk alone in the woods after this class!
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