WGA Annual Conference 2019: Writing Across Worlds

The three most decorated writers in Alberta change out of their sweatpants and climb out of their basements to share the exalted moments of their writing life. Starring Leslie Greentree, Blaine Newton, and Fran Kimmel. 
Join us for drinks and entertainment to kick off the conference! Snacks will be served.
Doors open 17:00.
Program starts at 20:00. Fran Kimmel lives in the bustling metropolis of Lacombe, world renowned for its Lacombe pig. Fran is a failed playwright who has penned two novels, No Good Asking and The Shore Girl, as well as drawerfuls of fluff and nonsense she can’t part with.

Leslie Greentree has written three books and won some awards, but that all feels like dusty news. Recently, she's been flogging a kick-ass short story manuscript, moving to Edmonton, leaping back into the joyful #dayjob world of public libraries, and working on an unpublishable artsy photo/text combo manuscript on grief and loss.

Blaine Newton is an Alberta playwright whose work was once described by the late Pope Benedict as "filled with warmth, particularly when burned." When not writing sketch comedy or performing improv with Rapid Fire Theatre, he can be found staring at his engineering degree wondering where it all went so very wrong.

8:30 - 9:30
Join us for coffee and snacks to start the day. If you did not attend the Friday Welcome Night, you may register your conference attendance here.

9:30 - 10:45

Sponsored by EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing

Larissa Lai talks about why she writes speculative fiction as opposed to realist fiction. Though the industry likes memoir from Asian people, Lai writes speculative fiction in order to embrace her own writerly agency. She takes up, in particular, the practice of the thought experiment, first envisioned by Ursula LeGuin, as a way of narratively testing out ideas that could be, but aren't, practiced in the world as it is. Lai adds to this by recognizing that the world changes in multiple ways at once, and that we get new worlds and fresh futures not through a single change but through a concatenation of changes, often driven by ideals of various kinds. We can’t predict what the results of the concatenation will be, but we can learn to pay attention so that we can recognize when beautiful, freeing or interesting things emerge from the interactions of ideals. The marvel of speculative fiction is that it can show us instances of how this might work, which is what she does in her most recent novel, The Tiger Flu, about a community of self-reproducing women and a disease that favours men.

Larissa Lai has authored three novels, The Tiger Flu, Salt Fish Girl and When Fox Is a Thousand; two poetry books, sybil unrest (with Rita Wong) and Automaton Biographies; a chapbook, Eggs in the Basement; and a critical book, Slanting I, Imagining We: Asian Canadian Literary Production in the 1980s and 1990s. A recipient of the Astraea Foundation Emerging Writers' Award, and a finalist for seven others, she holds a Canada Research Chair at the University of Calgary, where she directs The Insurgent Architects' House for Creative Writing.
Photo by Monique de St. Croix

Public speaking workshop with Joan Marie Galat
11:00 - 12:30

Audiences expect you to share yourself as well as your work. They want to know about your inspiration, habits and plans. Discover how to express yourself clearly and feel good about it next time you speak to a group or answer questions from the media.

Joan Marie Galat is an international award-winning author of more than 20 books for adults and children, including a Canadian best seller. Recent titles include Dot to Dot in the Sky, Stories in the Clouds (Whitecap Books); Solve This! Wild and Wacky Challenges for the Genius Engineer in You (National Geographic Kids), and Dark Matters—Nature’s Reaction to Light Pollution (Red Deer Press). She has worked as a radio show host, magazine editor, and freelance journalist. A frequent presenter, Joan has traveled from Canada’s Arctic Circle to a United Nations event in Seoul, to share her stories and promote science and literacy. Joan also operates MoonDot Media, offering freelance writing, editing, and training.

Sponsored by the Young Alberta Book Society (YABS)

Audiences expect you to share yourself as well as your work. They want to know about your inspiration, habits and plans. Discover how to express yourself clearly and feel good about it next time you speak to a group or answer questions from the media.

Discussion on digital strategies for writers
11:00 - 12:30

Sponsored by CanAuthors Alberta

Join us for a discussion about what writers need to know to thrive in the digital age. We will present digital developments of interest to writers, talk about what the WGA has been working on during our Digital Strategies consultation series, and open the discussion to attendees to ask questions and share their thoughts. Focus topics include copyright, social media, and internet access for rural and remote areas.

Dana DiTomaso likes to impart wisdom. It’s true, she will meet with you to teach you the ways of the digital world, but she is also a fan of random fact. Ten plus years in the industry means that Dana has seen it all.

Dr. Patrick Finn is the Director of Computational Media Design and Associate Professor in the School of Creative and Performing Arts at the University of Calgary. His primary interest is performance technology, where technology can be anything from writing and gestures, to robots and computer programming.

What You Alone Love: A Workshop on Memoir with Caterina Edwards
11:00 - 12:30

How do you avoid off-putting self-obsession when writing about yourself? How do you keep a reader’s interest in your personal experiences and reflections? One way to do both is through the exploration of your individual (and unique) passions. This workshop will include a writing exercise, examples, and discussion to help you identify what you alone love, and how it can be used to give your memoir focus and structure.

Caterina Edwards’ latest novel, The Sicilian Wife, (a literary Noir, was a National Post Best Book of 2015 and received rave reviews in Canada, the United States, and Sicily. Her five other books and several of her personal essays, in particular her memoir, Finding Rosa: A Mother with Alzheimer's, A Daughter's Search for the Past, have won major awards and diverse critical attention. The challenge of writing from one's experience led Caterina to co-edit two books of life writing and together with Jean Crozier, to create the Finding the Unique Writing Workshops. In 2016, Caterina was inducted into the City of Edmonton's Cultural Wall of Fame.

Panel discussion about challenging distinctions between literary and genre writing
13:30 - 14:45

As writers (and readers), we might have strong feelings about how to define literary fiction or genre fiction, or we might embrace and revel in the ambiguities and contradictions of these categories, and create literature that defies definition. Join these Alberta authors as they discuss writing that crosses and challenges the boundaries between literary fiction and genre fiction. Featuring Larissa Lai, Janice MacDonald, and Wayne Arthurson and moderated by Candas Jane Dorsey.

Larissa Lai has authored three novels, The Tiger Flu, Salt Fish Girl and When Fox Is a Thousand; two poetry books, sybil unrest (with Rita Wong) and Automaton Biographies; a chapbook, Eggs in the Basement; and a critical book, Slanting I, Imagining We: Asian Canadian Literary Production in the 1980s and 1990s. A recipient of the Astraea Foundation Emerging Writers' Award, and a finalist for seven others, she holds a Canada Research Chair at the University of Calgary, where she directs The Insurgent Architects' House for Creative Writing.
Photo by Monique de St. Croix

Wayne Arthurson is an Edmonton-based novelist and journalist of Cree and French Canadian descent, the author of the five novels, five books of non-fiction and numerous articles in a wide variety of publications. His novels include the award-winning Leo Desroches series, which won the 2012 Alberta Readers’ Choice Award in 2012 for Fall From Grace. Other novels include A Killing Winter, Blood Red Summer, The Traitors of Camp 133 and Final Season. He was the Writer in Residence for the Edmonton Public Library for 2016.

Best known for the popular academic Randy Craig Mysteries, the first detective series set in Edmonton, Alberta, Janice MacDonald has also produced non-fiction, short fiction, drama and music, and two rather spectacular children. A long time reviewer (her column, “If Words Could Kill” ran for several years in the Edmonton Journal) and devotee of mystery fiction, Janice wrote her thesis on detective fiction. She is also the author of the award-winning children’s book, Ghouls’ Night Out. Janice spent more than a decade teaching literature, communications and creative writing at Grant MacEwan, and now keeps the Government of Alberta safe from dangling modifiers. For more information than you could possibly require, head to janicemacdonald.net.

Candas Jane Dorsey is known as a writer of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. Ursula K. Le Guin has described Dorsey as “brilliant as William Gibson, as complex as Gene Wolfe, with a humanity and passion all her own.” Quill & Quire contributor Greg Boyd remarked that “the best of her fictions are emotionally grounded in the Alberta landscape: its pure blue arch of sky is too expansive to enclose the imaginative spirit.” Dorsey is the author of several novels, collections of short fiction, and books of poetry, and her work has won the Crawford, Tiptree and Aurora Awards and several WGA awards. She is founding president of SF Canada, Canada’s National Association of Speculative Fiction Professionals. She is a founding partner of Wooden Door and Associates, a professional communications company. She co-founded the publishing company The Books Collective, which released more than one hundred titles in fourteen years. She has been an active member of the literary community and other arts communities in Alberta for more than forty years. Her work as a creative writing teacher, writer in residence, and mentor has influenced many students and emerging writers. She has been a member of the Writers’ Guild of Alberta for many years and previously served on the organization’s Board of Directors. She has won a number of awards for her writing and community advocacy work, including the WGA's Golden Pen in 2017, and she was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2018. Her most recent book is ICE and other stories, published by PS Publishing, England, in fall 2018.
Photo by Christian Sauvé

Digital Strategies for Writers (One-on-One Meetings)
13:30 – 14:45

Continue the discussion about what writers need to know to thrive in the digital age. Dana DiTomaso and Dr. Patrick Finn from Saturday morning’s Digital Strategies for Writers session are back to keep the conversation going with one-on-one meetings for participants to ask further questions about digital strategies. Dana will be talking about digital marketing and social media, and Patrick will be discussing opportunities for writers in digital arts.

Sign-ups will be available at the conference, with priority given to participants in the morning’s Digital Strategies session who did not get a chance to ask questions.

Dana DiTomaso likes to impart wisdom. It’s true, she will meet with you to teach you the ways of the digital world, but she is also a fan of random fact. Ten plus years in the industry means that Dana has seen it all.

Dr. Patrick Finn is the Director of Computational Media Design and Associate Professor in the School of Creative and Performing Arts at the University of Calgary. His primary interest is performance technology, where technology can be anything from writing and gestures, to robots and computer programming.

Panel discussion about writing both poetry and nonfiction, and how the two work together.
13:30 - 14:45

Reading a Poem can feel like the ticking of a clock. Each tick sharing the intensity of expression, the expediency of language, the silence of a blank page. Is Nonfiction then, like peering inside the clock? Offering insight into how stories are put together? The workings of language? Perhaps time is what works for or against this language—an act of courage in the face of inhabiting this elusive art called, writing. Featuring Jenna Butler, Iman Mersal, and Kelly Shepherd and moderated by Alice Major. 

Welcome to the Anthropocene is Alice Major‘s 11th poetry collection. She has also published an award-winning essay collection on poetry and science. Alice is a long-time supporter of the literary community, who served as president of the Writers Guild along with many other arts organizations. As first poet laureate of Edmonton, she established the Edmonton Poetry Festival. She received the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Distinguished Artist Award in 2017. 

Kelly Shepherd’s second full-length poetry collection, Insomnia Bird: Edmonton Poems, was published by Thistledown Press in fall 2018. Shift, his first collection, was published by Thistledown in 2016 and longlisted for the Edmonton Public Library’s People’s Choice Award in 2017. He has written six poetry chapbooks, and a seventh is forthcoming from the Alfred Gustav Press. Kelly is also the poetry editor for the environmental philosophy journal The Trumpeter. Kelly has a Creative Writing MFA from UBC Okanagan, and an MA in Religious Studies from the University of Alberta. Originally from Smithers, British Columbia, Kelly lives in Edmonton, and teaches English and Communications at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology.

Jenna Butler is the author of five award-winning books: the poetry books Seldom Seen Road, Wells, and Aphelion; the essay collection A Profession of Hope: Farming on the Edge the of Grizzly Trail; and a new travelogue, Magnetic North: Sea Voyage to Svalbard. Her research into endangered environments has taken her from America’s Deep South to Ireland’s Ring of Kerry, and from volcanic Tenerife to the Arctic Circle, exploring human impact on lands under threat. A professor at Red Deer College, Butler lives with seven resident moose and a den of coyotes on an off-grid organic farm in northern Alberta. Photo by C.W. Hill

Iman Mersal is an Egyptian poet, essayist, translator and literary scholar, and Professor of Arabic Language and Literature at the University of Alberta, Canada. She is the author of five books of Arabic poetry, selections from which have been translated into numerous languages. In English translation, her poems have appeared in Parnassus, Paris Review, The Nation, American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review and Michigan Quarterly Review. A selection of Mersal’s poetry, entitled These Are Not Oranges, My Love, translated by the poet Khaled Mattawa, was published in 2008 (Sheep Meadow Press). Her most recent publications include an Arabic translation of Charles Simic’s memoir, A Fly in the Soup (Al Kotob Khan, 2016), and Kayfa Talta’im: ‘An al-Umuma wa Ashbahiha (Kayfa Ta and Mophradat, 2017), translated into English by Robin Moger as Motherhood and its Ghosts (Kayfa Ta and Sternberg Press, 2018).

Presentation by literary agent Carolyn Forde of Transatlantic Agency
15:00 - 16:40

Do you need an agent? What do they do? What don't they do? Learn what benefits an agent can bring an author and what a literary agent does on behalf of their authors. How can you find the right one for you? And when you find the agent for you, how best to convince them that you are a good fit for their list? Learn how to write an effective and targeted query and how to increase your chances of success in the process of searching for representation. Ask questions of an experienced agent about the industry and the process.

Previous to joining Transatlantic Agency as Senior Agent, Carolyn was a literary agent and International Rights Director at Westwood Creative Artists for 14 years.

She has represented authors who have won or been nominated for many awards, including but not limited to the following: Governor General’s Award, Scotiabank Giller Prize, RBC Taylor Prize, Writers Trust Hilary Weston Award, Trillium Book Award, Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-fiction, BC National Book Award, Toronto Book Award, Jim Connors Dartmouth Book Award, Margaret and John Savage First Book Award, Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, Speakers Award, Toronto Heritage Book Award, Hugo Prix for Best Foreign Thriller (France), Kobo Emerging Writer Award, Arthur Ellis Awards, LAMDA Awards, as well as many national and international bestsellers.

Image Credit: Tara Sinclair Hingco

Doors open for cocktails and mingling 18:00.
Buffet 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.

8:30 - 9:30
Join us for coffee and snacks to start the day. If you are attending Sunday only, you may register your attendance here.

09:30 - 10:45

Join poet and fiction writer Ian Williams for a poignant exploration on how writing intersects with our daily lives. Sometimes our writing competes to be top priority; sometimes it cannibalizes our experiences for material; sometimes it illuminates new perspectives. Inevitably, our writing process brings a unique set of challenges and rewards to our human experience of the world.

Ian Williams is a poet and fiction writer. His latest book, Reproduction, is a novel about how families are formed. His poetry collection, Personals, was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Robert Kroetsch Poetry Book Award. His short story collection, Not Anyone’s Anything, won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award for the best first collection of short fiction in Canada. His first book, You Know Who You Are, was a finalist for the ReLit Poetry Prize. CBC named him as one of ten Canadian writers to watch. He was the 2014-2015 Canadian Writer-in-Residence for the University of Calgary’s Distinguished Writers Program. In 2018, he became a trustee of the Griffin Poetry Prize. Williams teaches poetry at the University of British Columbia.

Story Games
13:00 - 14:30

In this workshop we will explore ways that card games, word puzzles, and other rule-based forms of creative play can help us inject new life into our fiction.

Thomas Wharton’s novels, stories, and nonfiction have been published in Canada, the US, the UK, France, Italy, and other countries. His first novel, Icefields, received the 1996 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book in Canada and the Caribbean. His first collection of fantastical stories, The Logogryph, was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. He has also published a YA fantasy trilogy, The Perilous Realm, which is currently in development for television. Wharton lives near Edmonton, Alberta and teaches creative writing.

Poetry workshop with Ian Williams
13:00 - 14:30

It’s time to stop waiting for inspiration! Ian Williams offers four specific and reliable ways to generate poems. Together we’ll try all four strategies, demystify the secrets of very productive writers, and supercharge our poetic output once more.

Ian Williams is a poet and fiction writer. His latest book, Reproduction, is a novel about how families are formed. His poetry collection, Personals, was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Robert Kroetsch Poetry Book Award. His short story collection, Not Anyone’s Anything, won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award for the best first collection of short fiction in Canada. His first book, You Know Who You Are, was a finalist for the ReLit Poetry Prize. CBC named him as one of ten Canadian writers to watch. He was the 2014-2015 Canadian Writer-in-Residence for the University of Calgary’s Distinguished Writers Program. In 2018, he became a trustee of the Griffin Poetry Prize. Williams teaches poetry at the University of British Columbia.

Speculative Fiction Workshop with Candas Jane Dorsey
13:00 - 14:30

In this workshop, writers will have the opportunity to discuss the special challenges and joys of writing speculative fiction with Candas Jane Dorsey, one of Canada's premier SF professionals. "Speculative fiction" is the overall term for all the different kinds of non-realism in literature, including SF, fantasy and the fantastical, the supernatural, magic realism, the New Weird and many more. Our conversation will cover some history, a bit of theory, and best practices of both the conceptual and the concrete, and will leave participants with suggestions for how to improve their speculative writing to be the best--and weirdest--they can possibly (or impossibly) be!

Candas Jane Dorsey is known as a writer of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. Ursula K. Le Guin has described Dorsey as “brilliant as William Gibson, as complex as Gene Wolfe, with a humanity and passion all her own.” Quill & Quire contributor Greg Boyd remarked that “the best of her fictions are emotionally grounded in the Alberta landscape: its pure blue arch of sky is too expansive to enclose the imaginative spirit.” Dorsey is the author of several novels, collections of short fiction, and books of poetry, and her work has won the Crawford, Tiptree and Aurora Awards and several WGA awards. She is founding president of SF Canada, Canada’s National Association of Speculative Fiction Professionals. She is a founding partner of Wooden Door and Associates, a professional communications company. She co-founded the publishing company The Books Collective, which released more than one hundred titles in fourteen years. She has been an active member of the literary community and other arts communities in Alberta for more than forty years. Her work as a creative writing teacher, writer in residence, and mentor has influenced many students and emerging writers. She has been a member of the Writers’ Guild of Alberta for many years and previously served on the organization’s Board of Directors. She has won a number of awards for her writing and community advocacy work, including the WGA's Golden Pen in 2017, and she was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2018. Her most recent book is ICE and other stories, published by PS Publishing, England, in fall 2018.
Photo by Hugh A.D. Spencer

Q&A with Claire Kelly (NeWest Press), Netta Johnson (Stonehouse Publishing), literary agent Carolyn Forde (TransAtlantic Agency), and author S. G. Wong and moderated by Sophie Pinkoski (WGA Youth Committee)
14:45 - 16:00

Presented by the WGA Youth Committee.

Netta Johnson is the Publisher at one of Edmonton’s newest Publishing houses, Stonehouse Publishing. She loves coffee, tea and a story well told. In her fleeting free time, you will find her curled up with an historical novel, putting everything else on hold until she has finished. Aside from being a writer, editor, reader and lover of literature, she dabbles in bread-making and stone masonry. Netta currently serves on the board of the Book Publishers Association of Alberta and the Waldorf Education Society of Edmonton.

S.G. Wong has published as an indie author, as well as with a large publisher and smaller presses. Wong writes the Lola Starke series and Crescent City short stories: hard-boiled detective tales set in an alternate-history 1930s-era "Chinese L.A." replete with ghosts and magic. A mentor, speaker, and community organizer, she’s been involved with literary and genre organizations, conferences, festivals, and workshops across Canada. She is an Arthur Ellis Awards finalist and a Whistler Independent Book Awards nominee. A member of The Writers Union of Canada and the Writers’ Guild of Alberta, she is also Past President of Sisters in Crime—Canada West and is based in Edmonton, where she can often be found staring out the window in between frenzied bouts of typing.

Previous to joining Transatlantic Agency as Senior Agent, Carolyn Forde was a literary agent and International Rights Director at Westwood Creative Artists for 14 years. She has represented authors who have won or been nominated for many awards, including but not limited to the following: Governor General’s Award, Scotiabank Giller Prize, RBC Taylor Prize, Writers Trust Hilary Weston Award, Trillium Book Award, Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-fiction, BC National Book Award, Toronto Book Award, Jim Connors Dartmouth Book Award, Margaret and John Savage First Book Award, Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, Speakers Award, Toronto Heritage Book Award, Hugo Prix for Best Foreign Thriller (France), Kobo Emerging Writer Award, Arthur Ellis Awards, LAMDA Awards, as well as many national and international bestsellers.

Claire Kelly is a graduate of the master’s program in English – Creative Writing at the University of New Brunswick. She has worked in publishing for ten years, currently at NeWest Press, and has written two collections of poetry, One Thing—Then Another(ECW Press 2019) and Maunder (Palimpsest Press 2017). Her work has appeared in literary journals across Canada, most recently or forthcoming in Grain, QWERTY Magazine, The Antigonish Review, and Prairie Fire. She lives, writes, and works in Edmonton on Treaty 6 territory.

Drop in any time after 15:00

For participants wishing to enjoy a final round of socializing or networking over coffee and farewell snacks—you may choose to use this time to debrief with fellow participants and conference speakers, to ask any final questions you have, and to deepen your connections with others.