2020 WGA Annual Conference: Wonder & Retrospect – Postponed

Fort Calgary
1888 Barracks Officers' Mess (2nd floor)
750 9 Ave SE, Calgary, AB

Doors open for cocktails and mingling 18:00.
Dinner 19:00
Dress code: semiformal/festive attire

Please join us for an evening that celebrates literary excellence and Alberta's writing community! We will present awards in nine categories that include fiction, nonfiction, drama, poetry, and children's literature. More details coming soon.

Come join us for coffee and snacks to start off the day. Be sure to stop by the registration desk on your way in!

Doors open at 9:00 am.

Writing memoir with Governor General's Award nominated author Naomi K. Lewis.

10:00 – 12:00
Classroom 014

Naomi K. Lewis is author of the novel Cricket in a Fist and the short story collection I Know Who You Remind Me Of, and co-editor of the anthology Shy. Her memoir, Tiny Lights for Travellers, was a finalist for the 2019 Governor General's Literary Award for Nonfiction. She was an associate editor at Alberta Views magazine, and her journalism has been shortlisted for provincial and national magazine awards. She has served as writer in residence at the University of New Brunswick and the Calgary Public Library.

Photo Credit: Aaron Giovannone

Psychological thrillers allow us to explore the more sinister sides of our imagination, and even let us live as our darker selves — vicariously, momentarily and without suffering any of the consequences. These stories — and all narratives regardless of genre — hinge on tension and suspense. P.J. Vernon’s workshop will explore the craft of cultivating tension, ginning up suspense, and creating compulsive tales of fear and thrills no matter what you write. 

10:00 – 12:00
BMO Community Room

P. J. Vernon is “a name to watch in the thriller genre” (Booklist). Library Journal and Book Riot compare his critically-acclaimed Gothic debut When You Find Me to Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects. Vernon’s next thriller, Bath Haus, pitched as “Gone Girl with gays and Grindr” is forthcoming from Doubleday US (2021). Vernon is represented by CookeMcDermid and United Talent Agency (film). He and his husband live in Canada.

Where narrative meets poetry led by award-winning poet and novelist, Laisha Rosnau.

10:00 – 12:00
Classroom 013

Laisha Rosnau is the author of four award-wining collections of poetry and two critically acclaimed novels. Her most recent novel, Little Fortress (Wolsak & Wynn, 2019), is described as “a stunning work of fiction” by Quill & Quire, and her collection, Our Familiar Hunger (Nightwood Editions, 2018), is called “a shimmering achievement” in Arc poetry journal. Rosnau’s work has been the recipient of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Award, the Blue Heron Poetry Award, and the Acorn-Plantos People’s Poetry Prize and nominated for several awards, including the Amazon/Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Pat Lowther Award, and the CBC Poetry Prize. Rosnau lives in Coldstream, BC, where she is the Cultural Program Coordinator at the Vernon Museum and Archives, and she and her family are resident caretakers of Bishop Wild Bird Sanctuary.

A writing workshop with Pulitzer Prize winner Anthony Doerr, exploring habit and strangeness with the goal of seeing our work—and the world—with new eyes.

We humans need habit: habit helps us cook dinner, feel safe, and find light switches in the dark. But as an old proverb puts it, “habits are cobwebs at first, cables at last.” How often do we rely on the habitual in our writing? In this four-hour workshop, we’ll try to investigate the formulaic and the familiar—from cliches at the sentence level to cliches at the structural level—and understand how we might better recognize, utilize, and resist the habitual in our novels, stories, essays, and poems. Do we want our work to be soporific, or do we want our work to wake our readers up to the exquisite miracles of being alive? As Ralph Waldo Emerson reminds us, “People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.”

10:00 – 15:00
Studio Theatre | 1st Floor, cSpace King Edward
1721, 29th Ave SW, Calgary, AB

Lunch provided.

Anthony Doerr was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. He is the author of the story collections The Shell Collector and Memory Wall the memoir Four Seasons in Rome, and the novels About Grace and All the Light We Cannot See, which was awarded the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. He served as guest editor for the 2019 Best American Short Stories, which will be released in October.

Doerr’s short stories and essays have won four O. Henry Prizes and been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, New American Stories, The Best American Essays, The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Fiction, and lots of other places. His work has been translated into over forty languages and won the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, the Rome Prize, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEA Fellowship, an Alex Award from the American Library Association, the National Magazine Award for Fiction, four Pushcart Prizes, two Pacific Northwest Book Awards, four Ohioana Book Awards, the 2010 Story Prize, which is considered the most prestigious prize in the U.S. for a collection of short stories, and the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award, which is the largest prize in the world for a single short story. All the Light We Cannot See was a #1 New York Times bestseller, remained on the hardcover fiction bestseller list for 134 consecutive weeks, and is being adapted as a limited series by Netflix.

Doerr lives in Boise, Idaho with his wife and two sons. Though he is often asked, as far as he knows he is not related to the late writer Harriet Doerr.

Photo credit: Todd Meier

12:00 - 13:00 Outside BMO Community Room

13:15 — 15:15
BMO Community Room

Agent Sam Hiyate worked at the literary magazines Blood & Aphorisms and The Quarterly in the 90s. He ran the edgy micropublisher, Gutter Press, from 1993 to 2002, as publisher. He launched the literary division of The Lavin Agency in 2003, where he built a list of clients and did his first deals. Sam’s projects for The Rights Factory have been in various categories, including memoir, literary and commercial fiction, narrative non-fiction, lifestyle, self-improvement and graphic novels.

He’s looking for works of all categories with distinct and compelling voices. He loves humor. He loves to discover and help new writers prepare their works for the market, and to help them build lasting publishing careers.

As technology infiltrates all corners of our lives, writers are finding new opportunities for reaching rapidly evolving audiences. Starting with Twitter and podcasts and expanding into virtual reality, robotics, projecting, sensing, GPS and more, Olyn Ozbick leads a conversation that will explore the many ways writers can find unique language and evolving platforms for their literary creations.

13:15 — 15:15
Classroom 013

Olyn Ozbick is an internationally award-winning magazine editor, a journalist and fiction writer, a finalist in the CBC Short Story Awards, and picture book author. Her fiction has been published in anthologies and literary magazines in Canada, the US and the UK. Her essays, reports, reviews and creative non-fiction have been widely published. She is passionate about language and literature and fascinated by technology and its possibilities. She teaches writing at the Alexandra Writers' Centre and has taught Journalism in the Faculty of Journalism at Mount Royal University. She received the support of Banff Centre’s Writers Residencies in 2013 and 2014, and in 2019 was invited to represent the Literary Arts at Banff Centre’s Digital Transformation Summit. She considers herself to be not so much facing a rapidly digitizing world, as amazed and enthralled by it, and so investigating how storytelling, language and literature can find a place in the digitized world is foremost on her creative mind. She wonders: In what ways can new technologies help writers and their work with words, language, concepts and craft? In addition to her interest in AI, VR, GPS and more, Olyn’s short story Help Fund Pam’s Vital Medical Procedure observes and plays with the some of the new languages bubbling up as a result of digitization. Olyn lives in Calgary with her frisbee-lovin’ border collie.

Take a moment to grab a coffee and a snack between sessions.

15:15 – 15:45

Marina Endicott, Jared Darcy Tailfeathers, Natalie Meisner
Moderated by Marcello Di Cintio

15:45 — 17:00
BMO Community Room

Marina Endicott’s Good to a Fault was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and CBC Radio’s Canada Reads, and won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book, Canada and the Caribbean. Her next, The Little Shadows, was short-listed for the Governor General’s award and long-listed for the Giller Prize, as was Close to Hugh. She teaches creative writing at the University of Alberta, Humber College and the Banff Centre for the Arts. Her latest novel, The Difference, was one of the Globe and Mail's Globe 100: Books That Shaped 2019.

Jared Darcy Tailfeathers creates unique art that spans a variety of medium including graphic novels, musical instruments he invents and builds himself, illustrations, art installations and exhibitions. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Alberta College of Art and Design (2015) and is an active member and volunteer on the arts and culture scene in Alberta. Jared is the Visual Art Director for Indigenous Resilience In Music (IRIM), a not for profit indigenous led collective that fosters growth of aboriginal artists in many disciplines, focused on indigenous youth. In 2017 Tailfeathers released a self-published graphic novel series Spite (issues 1-3) and a graphic novel for young audiences titled Portifore and Boulderdecept: The Crow and the Beasts Bellow. He is described as “...part of an up and coming generation of artists who will cross bridges culturally and artistically with a new level of meaning, understanding and reconciliation.” Future plans include making prototype musical instruments and inventions accessible to a wide audience for creative output. He is committed to promoting artistic growth in Calgary, especially for youth and children. He is the Program Coordinator for Indigenous Placemaking at the Calgary Public Library.

Natalie Meisner is a multi-genre Canadian author whose work focuses on comedy and social change.  Her play Boom Baby (about the lives of workers in the oil patch) won both the Canadian National Playwriting Award and the Alberta Playwriting Award. Speed Dating for Sperm Donors (Playwrights Canada Press, April 2020) was a hit at Lunchbox and Neptune Theatres. Double Pregnant: Two Lesbians Make a Family topped nonfiction lists and was a finalist in the Atlantic Book Awards. Her first children’s book My Mommy, My Mama, My Brother & Me is available from Nimbus Publishing.  Baddie One Shoe (Frontenac House) is a book of poems dedicated to renegade women of the past and present, Meisner is a wife and mom to two great boys.  She is also a full Professor in the Department of English and Director of Changemaking at Mount Royal University where she enjoys teaching and mentoring up and coming writers and thinkers. (www.nataliemeisner.com)

Marcello Di Cintio is the author of four books, including Walls: Travels Along the Barricades which won the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing and The City of Calgary W. O. Mitchell Book Prize. Di Cintio’s newest book, Pay No Heed to the Rockets: Palestine in the Present Tense – which also won The City of Calgary W. O. Mitchell Book Prize – seeks to reveal life in contemporary Palestine as seen through the lens of Palestine’s rich literary culture. Currently, Di Cintio is working on a book about the secret lives of Canadian taxi drivers.

Marcello Di Cintio's photo credit: James May

Check out some of the closest haunts for dinner: Luke’s downstairs bistro, Rooftop Taqueria or Charbar at the Simmons Building, the Garden Suites hotel restaurant or Café Rosso inside the National Music Centre.

17:00 – 18:45

Join us for a mesmerizing evening with Anthony Doerr as he spills the details on the writing life, why stories are so important to our cultural landscape and the wonder and awe in the world around us. There will be an opportunity to ask questions.

Book signing to follow! Bring your copy of, or purchase at the event, any book written by Anthony Doerr.

You can also join us for a wine and cheese reception to put the perfect cap on the evening. Come mingle, socialize and visit Renée Meloche for a tarot card reading.

19:00 – 20:00
Wine and cheese reception to follow 20:00 – 21:30
Patricia A. Whelan Performance Hall

Anthony Doerr was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. He is the author of the story collections The Shell Collector and Memory Wall the memoir Four Seasons in Rome, and the novels About Grace and All the Light We Cannot See, which was awarded the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. He served as guest editor for the 2019 Best American Short Stories, which will be released in October.

Renée Meloche is an Ontarian transplant making her home in Edmonton with her husband and two mutinous corgis. She writes weird little short stories, novels and poems which often uses Tarot cards to plot out. She is currently involved with the WGA Youth Committee and EPL Write Nights. Find her across social media channels @reneewrought.

Photo credit: Todd Meier

Grab a coffee to start the day.

If you didn't already come by on Saturday, be sure to stop by the registration desk on your way in!

Jared Darcy Tailfeathers will be giving the welcome and land acknowledgement prior to the Sunday Morning Keynote with Alix Ohlin. After the keynote, there will be a 20 minute in-conversation with Alix Ohlin led by Samantha Warwick and an audience Q & A.

10:00 — 11:15
Patricia A. Whelan Performance Hall

Alix Ohlin is the author of five books, most recently Dual Citizens (June 2019). Dual Citizens, like her novel Inside, was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Walrus, Best American Short Stories, on public radio’s “Selected Shorts,” and many other places. She lives in Vancouver, where she chairs the Creative Writing Program at the University of British Columbia.

WGA Annual General Meeting and lunch to follow for AGM attendees

11:15 — 12:30
Patricia A. Whelan Performance Hall

Lunch is available for all conference participants and AGM attendees.

12:30 - 13:20
Reception area above theatre in Patricia A. Whelan Performance Hall

Authors Marina Endicott and Laisha Rosnau in conversation with moderator/author Fred Stenson.

13:30 — 14:45
BMO Community Room

Marina Endicott’s Good to a Fault was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and CBC Radio’s Canada Reads, and won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book, Canada and the Caribbean. Her next, The Little Shadows, was short-listed for the Governor General’s award and long-listed for the Giller Prize, as was Close to Hugh. She teaches creative writing at the University of Alberta, Humber College and the Banff Centre for the Arts. Her latest novel, The Difference, was one of the Globe and Mail's Globe 100: Books That Shaped 2019.

Laisha Rosnau is the author of four award-wining collections of poetry and two critically acclaimed novels. Her most recent novel, Little Fortress (Wolsak & Wynn, 2019), is described as “a stunning work of fiction” by Quill & Quire, and her collection, Our Familiar Hunger (Nightwood Editions, 2018), is called “a shimmering achievement” in Arc poetry journal. Rosnau’s work has been the recipient of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Award, the Blue Heron Poetry Award, and the Acorn-Plantos People’s Poetry Prize and nominated for several awards, including the Amazon/Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Pat Lowther Award, and the CBC Poetry Prize. Rosnau lives in Coldstream, BC, where she is the Cultural Program Coordinator at the Vernon Museum and Archives, and she and her family are resident caretakers of Bishop Wild Bird Sanctuary.

Fred Stenson is an Alberta author, of fiction, nonfiction and film. He has written twenty books. His novel, The Trade (2000) won the Grant MacEwan Award, the George Bugnet Award and The City of Edmonton Book Prize. It was nominated for the Giller. His novel The Great Karoo was nominated for the Governor General's Award for Fiction in 2009. For fifteen years, Stenson directed the Wired Writing Studio at The Banff Centre. He has been a columnist for Alberta Views magazine for over twenty years. He has recently moved back to his place of origin: Pincher Creek, Alberta.

Presented by Jared Darcy Tailfeathers and the WGA Youth Committee.
More details coming soon!

13:30 — 14:45
Classroom 013

Jared Darcy Tailfeathers creates unique art that spans a variety of medium including graphic novels, musical instruments he invents and builds himself, illustrations, art installations and exhibitions. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Alberta College of Art and Design (2015) and is an active member and volunteer on the arts and culture scene in Alberta. Jared is the Visual Art Director for Indigenous Resilience In Music (IRIM), a not for profit indigenous led collective that fosters growth of aboriginal artists in many disciplines, focused on indigenous youth. In 2017 Tailfeathers released a self-published graphic novel series Spite (issues 1-3) and a graphic novel for young audiences titled Portifore and Boulderdecept: The Crow and the Beasts Bellow. He is described as “...part of an up and coming generation of artists who will cross bridges culturally and artistically with a new level of meaning, understanding and reconciliation.” Future plans include making prototype musical instruments and inventions accessible to a wide audience for creative output. He is committed to promoting artistic growth in Calgary, especially for youth and children. He is the Program Coordinator for Indigenous Placemaking at the Calgary Public Library.

Session Details to Come

13:30 — 14:45

Take a moment to grab a coffee and a snack between sessions.

2:45 - 3:00

Authors Elizabeth Withey and Yewanda Daniel-Ayoade with YA agent Stacey Kondla in conversation with moderator Leanne Shirtliffe

How is the KidLit community leading the way in social justice and identity? Hear about emerging and prevailing themes, from picture books to young adult. Explore the current practices and trends that are shaping this industry in both fiction and non-fiction.

15:00—16:15
Classroom 013

Elizabeth Withey is an author, journalist, and visual artist based in Calgary. Her first picture book, The One with the Scraggly Beard (Orca Books), is a story about homelessness inspired by family experiences. The One with the Scraggly Beard is illustrated by Lynn Scurfield, and will be out in September 2020.

Stacey Kondra has been in the book business for 17 years. She joined The Rights Factory as an associate agent in March 2018 and was promoted to agent in January 2020. Her previous experience includes working as a Field Representative for Scholastic Book Fairs, managing the IndigoKids department at two different Chapters/Indigo stores, accepting freelance editing contracts, and serving on the organizing committee of When Words Collide (A Festival for Readers and Writers). Stacey specializes in children’s books, picture books through to YA, fiction and nonfiction. 

Yewande Daniel-Ayoade is a children's book author, Canadian immigrant and mum of five kids. Her picture book, What's the Worst that Could Happen? debuted on Amazon's Children's Literature best seller list. She is also the author of the Sade picture book series, which explores the immigration experience from a child's perspective. Yewande has a Bachelor's degree in Economics and a Master's in Business Administration. Follow her on Twitter at @ydanielayoade, on Facebook at @yewandebooks, or on her website at www.ydaniel-ayoade.com. 

Leanne Shirtliffe is the author of several picture books, including Sloth to the Rescue, I Love Sharks, Too!, and The Change Your Name Store, and has recently entered into the world of middle grade. When she’s not writing, Leanne can be found either teaching high school students or laughing with (or at) her husband and teenaged children. Leanne has lived across Canada and around the world, including in Bahrain and Thailand. She now makes her home in Calgary, where she’s pledged never to complain about the weather.

Most Frequently Asked Questions About the Writing Life and Publishing Authors Alix Ohlin and Steena Holmes with agent Sam Hiyate in conversation with book reviewer at ivereadthis.com Anne Logan. Here we’ll address the most common questions regarding the writing life and the ever-changing nature of publishing.

15:00 — 16:15
BMO Community Room

Alix Ohlin is the author of five books, most recently Dual Citizens (June 2019). Dual Citizens, like her novel Inside, was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Walrus, Best American Short Stories, on public radio’s “Selected Shorts,” and many other places. She lives in Vancouver, where she chairs the Creative Writing Program at the University of British Columbia.

Steena Holmes is an author living in Calgary, Alberta. She is the author of USA Today and Amazon bestselling, award winning title Finding Emma, winner of the 2012 Indie Excellence Award and the Memory Child. Steena signed a three-book deal with Amazon in 2012 and is a frequent guest speaker on the subject of indie publishing. Visit her website at www.steenaholmes.com

Agent Sam Hiyate worked at the literary magazines Blood & Aphorisms and The Quarterly in the 90s. He ran the edgy micropublisher, Gutter Press, from 1993 to 2002, as publisher. He launched the literary division of The Lavin Agency in 2003, where he built a list of clients and did his first deals. Sam’s projects for The Rights Factory have been in various categories, including memoir, literary and commercial fiction, narrative non-fiction, lifestyle, self-improvement and graphic novels. He’s looking for works of all categories with distinct and compelling voices. He loves humor. He loves to discover and help new writers prepare their works for the market, and to help them build lasting publishing careers.

Anne Logan has worked in the Canadian book industry for eleven years as a publicist, literary festival programmer, and book reviewer. She is Past President for the Writers’ Guild of Alberta and currently sits on the Board of Directors for Calgary Reads. As the book columnist for CBC Calgary, she reviews books on air for radio and television. She hosts Wordfest’s monthly book club We’ve Read This, and reviews books on her blog ivereadthis.com. 

Anne Logan's photo credit: Monique de St. Croix

Thanks so much for joining us for Wonder & Retrospect - Reclaim Your Curiosity!