2025 WordsWorth Instructors & Courses

Registration is open!

  • Early Bird rate: $590 (until April 30th)
  • Regular rate: $630

Week 1 (ages 11 – 14): July 13 – 18, 2025
Week 2 (ages 15 – 19): July 20 – 25, 2025

Location: Red Deer Polytechnic (RDP), Red Deer, AB

T-shirt: $25
Anthology: $12

WordsWorth is a week-long sleepover creative writing residency for young writers who believe in the power of words. Writers will be completely immersed in the creative and diverse world of writing. Guided by established and respected artist-instructors, writers will experience writing through fiction, nonfiction, poetry, spoken word, music, and more. But the experiences don’t begin and end with the classes; WordsWorth is a place where young writers come together to celebrate writing through friendship, campfires, concerts, open mic sessions, hikes, haiku, and semi-competitive games outside of class.

2025 Instructors & Classes

Click the tabs to meet this year’s WordsWorth instructors!

More Instructor & Class info coming soon!

 

 

 

Course: Illustration for Writers
 
As writers, we use observation and intuition to transmogrify the visual into the written. In this drawing class, we’ll learn how those same skills work in the opposite direction. We’ll approach drawing from its foundations of shape, line, and medium then apply those basics through exercises like figure drawing and thumb-nailing. Quick jaunts into anatomy and perspective will add context to our observational drawings and exploration of technique will help you find your style. These fundamentals don’t require previous drawing experience, only an interest in finding new ways to put pencil (or pen, or paint, or crayon, or magazine clippings, or dirt and grass) to paper.
 
 

Marin Perlette‘s art practice is multifaceted and a little dubious at times, but when pressed for an answer to the question “what do you do?”, they usually manage to boil it down to “I make cartoons.” As a freelancer, Marin has worked as a graphic designer, illustrator, and animator. Their personal projects are an ever-growing hoard of zines, storyboards, comics, and character designs that lean into the whimsical and the wistful. Recently, Marin has started producing prints and zines that they peddle at Albertan art markets, a practice they find both deeply gratifying and frightening. Between visual art projects, they can be found writing poetry, making music, and baking for their friends.
 
 
 

Course Descriptions: 

Week One – What’s Old Is New Again
Grow your word hoard with new creations made from old ways of speaking!
 
Combining games, writing challenges, and lessons on the evolution and flexibility of language, “What’s Old Is New Again” explores how we can draw on Old English to find ways of making our writing more interesting.
 
Week Two – It Must Be Said
How do you write if you can only speak?
 
In this class, we’ll play with methods used in making “oral literature,” all while learning about differences between literate and oral modes of creating and thinking. 

 

Johnny MacRae (he/him) is a spoken word poet living on the unceded ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-waututh), and sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) nations. A winner of regional and national slam titles, he has toured widely as a featured performer at poetry series and arts festivals, both solo and with collaborative acts such as 2 Dope Boys in a Cadillac, Travelin’ Word Circus and The Dambassadors. In 2013, he was named Poet of Honour for the Victoria Spoken Word Festival, and in 2017, received the Zaccheus Jackson Nyce Memorial Award.

Course: Get Real: Writing Relatable Characters
 
Realism doesn’t need to be boring. In fact, it can breathe life into otherwise one-dimensional characters and turn a flavourless story into a delectable one. Through games, exercises, group discussions, and free writing, you’ll learn to wield wily literary devices and make your characters tangible, memorable, relatable, and—if you’re crafty enough—unlikeable.
 
Émanuel (he/him) is a bilingual multi-disciplinary artist of Dutch-immigrant and Acadian-settler descent, born and raised in Treaty 6’s amiskwaciwâskahikan (Edmonton). His practice is mainly based in theatre, film, and TV as an actor, translator, and producer, but he has always always always been a writer. Recent short story publications include “Spam” (DarkWinter Press and Literary Magazine) and “Viande hachée, à feu moyen” (À ciel ouvert). Émanuel spends his scant spare time reading, dancing, learning German, and showering affection upon his step-dog.

Course: Your Writing Sucks and That’s Okay!

Learn to not only give valuable criticism but use it too. Silence your inner critic and find the freedom to joyfully go from your first draft to your final draft by tightening your writing, exploring vocabulary, literary devices, and grammar. This is OUR TIME so, of course you will be learning these rules so you can strategically break them and make your writing your own.

 

Kim Firmston is the Youth Program DIrector and an instructor at the Alexandra Writers’ Centre (AWCS) in Calgary. They are also an absolutely mad writer who has written a bunch of YA books, two award winning documentaries, a handful of short stories, one poem, and plays which have taken to stage around the world. They love nothing better than writing with others and have even created a collaborative publishing company which only publishes books written by two or more youth. Although Kim is VERY old now (they rode to school on dinosaurs, uphill both ways), they are still having an amazing number of grand adventures to add to their innumerable stories.

Course: Paradise by the Dashboard Light

Often regarded as The Greatest Poem Ever Written™, John Milton’s Paradise Lost takes on all the greatest themes of literature. What is the origin of evil? Why must we live in the shadow of death? How hot is too hot? This class will read the first instalments in the epic poem and discuss how Milton’s mastery of form and style can help us with our own writing. Our endeavour will require a keen eye, a tenacious mind, and the intellectual fearlessness to conjure Hell in the middle of Red Deer. 

 

Richard Kelly Kemick Richard Kelly Kemick is an award-winning poet, journalist, and fiction writer. His debut collection of short stories, Hello, Horse, was published by Biblioasis in 2024. He is also the author of I Am Herod (available on audiobook), the poetry collection Caribou Run, and the stage play Amor De Cosmos: A Delusional Musical. 

Course: Writing About Joy and Using it as an Act of Resistance

When the world feels upside down, creating art through a joyous lens can feel nearly impossible. Where is there space for idealism and rebellion in the same breath? Can we fight the power while empowering hope?  Can we use our connected creativity as part of our arsenal? We will examine and invent lyrics that balance, blur and shakeup the line between despair and joyousness. 

 

Lindsey Walker is a musician, composer, multi-instrumentalist, comedian and all around weirdo currently residing in Edmonton, Alberta. She has won many awards, and has lost many, many more. Some things she is proud of: writing the lyrics and music for 2 musicals (one based on the real lives of awesome women in Canada’s history, the other written with longtime pal Richard Kemick about one of Canada’s least known political figures), releasing an EP and a full-length album (with a new EP on the way), writing for and performing in the sketch comedy group “Sketchy Broads”, improvising with the weekly made-up-on-the-spot soap opera “Die-Nasty”, and having a great garden. Ask Lindsey about birds if you have an hour to spare, it’s one of her current obsessions.

Course: Find Your Voice: Creative Flow for the Writer

What is “Writer’s Block”, and how can we morph it into something fabulous? This class uses drama games, movement, acting skills and weird noises to explore boundless, creative potential. Maybe you want to dabble in acting or spoken-word poetry, or possibly stand up in public and be heard? Our goal is open, honest, confident communication, whether on paper or out in the wild. Let’s make a racket!

David Wilson (BMus, Mmus) is a Singer, Conductor, Voice Teacher, Yoga Guru and Breath Therapist. He is recognized across Canada as a leading authority on the use of Yoga, Functional Vocal Work and Breath Therapy to aid healthy vocal production. He offers workshops to singers, public speakers, teachers, actors and spoken word poets on vocal power, creative freedom, confidence, anxiety relief, and public speaking. He has self-published six outstanding eBooks and Videos, including “The Embodied Voice”. David is also an Instructor for the Theatre Arts BFA program at MacEwan University. www.the-wilson-method.com @thewilsonmethod #the_wilson_method.

 

Course: You-Topia

In this class you will create a utopia. A world ordered and run exactly as you see fit. You will come up with the rules of that world, and together you and Steve will direct a show set in a universe of your creation. Some days you will direct, some days you will act, and some days you will write, but every day you will see a new way that the world could be.
 

Steve Currie is a poet, improviser and comedian from Vancouver BC. He believe in humor, grace, playfulness, and tight scheduling. He has performed as an ensemble member in comedy, literary and spoken word festivals across Canada and the U.S. As a director, he has run “Here and Gone”, “Ad Improvinem”, the Winnipeg Spoken Word Festival and the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word. Mostly, he likes making people laugh.

2025 Creative Team & Staff

Click the tabs to meet this year’s Creative Team & Staff! 

 

 

COLIN MATTY has been with the Writer’s Guild of Alberta since 2012, becoming the Director of Drink the Wild Air and WordsWorth in 2015. He is the author of three plays, two sketch comedies, and thousands of poems. Colin has tread the boards of festivals and competitions from Victoria to Montreal and is an accomplished creator, performer and educator in the fields of theatre, poetry, and improvisation. His work has a strong focus on playful discovery and aims to foster the joy that comes with engaging the creative powers that lie latent within us all.

Henry Fithern-Stiele

Is a storytelling animator residing in Kelowna BC. He spends his days working as “Main soil guy” in a garden centre, and when he’s not doing that he can be found writing poetry, scripts, and whatever creative endeavours he can get his grubby little mitts on. He’s also an action movie fanatic, and throws down in a video game or two! He is beyond excited to be returning to Wordsworth this year and can’t wait to create, run, and play the week away! Let’s gooooo!

Kaja Pedersen is a writer, crafter, and wanderer, coming to a forest-dwelling near you. She is originally from Calgary, and grew up on the traditional lands of the peoples of Treaty 7, which include the Blackfoot Confederacy, the Tsuut’ina First Nation, and the Stoney Nakoda. She is a fourth year undergraduate student at the University of Victoria and studies History and Creative Writing, with special interests 20th Century queer history, personal journalism, and fiction. Kaja is always looking for friends to meet, tunes to hum, games to play, crafts to make, and toadstools big enough to sit on.

Jesse Tollestrup (They/Them) grew up rural in the prairies of Treaty 7, running with hordes of barn cats and cutting their teeth on campfire jams. After many years as a travelling bard, Jess got a university degree in social sciences and settled down in Edmonton, Alberta to hone their craft as a music instructor & improvisor. 

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