The WGA needs your support! And best of all, it only takes a few seconds of your time.
The WGA has been selected to compete for community votes to win funds for the Preservation of Culture: Multi-Lingual Writing Program through the Field Law: Community Funding Program.
Voting Closes on November 22, 2025.
Cast your vote here!
Our Idea
We are looking to raise funds to host a year-long writing program for Spanish writers, including one virtual craft talk with an established Latin-American author per semester, culminating in an anthology or other publication project, with the potential for a translation collaboration.
To celebrate and honour what we lovingly refer to as a cultural mosaic here in Canada, this is an opportunity to encourage and foster writing, storytelling, and community in the many unofficial languages that are spoken in Alberta. As most creative writing offerings are conducted in English, this program will instead celebrate the many different cultures and languages practiced and spoken in Alberta and further our commitment to diversity, as well as to the preservation of language and culture of those who are making new homes for themselves in Alberta. We are not a melting pot. Every culture brought to our province deserves to be celebrated.
The pilot program will be conducted in Spanish. Led by Venezuelan-born and now Calgary-based writer Ernesto Campo, this is a monthly meetup for Spanish speaking writers (and those who wish to begin writing!) to come together, share stories, and write in their native language. The program will run in quarterly semesters, with one virtual craft talk with an established Latin-American author per semester to stream in via Zoom. To celebrate the program and its participants, we wish to produce an anthology of works written by group members and put on a special in-person event in winter 2026 to celebrate the launch of the anthology.
Our facilitator Ernesto Campo is a member of Centro Latino and intends to lean on his connections there as well as the wider community to maximize engagement both by program participants as well as the Latin-American community in Calgary at large.
Who Will Benefit?
According to data from the 2021 Canadian Census, there are 18,095 Spanish speakers in Calgary, with Spanish being one of the city’s most common non-official languages spoken at home by residents. There are 134,395 people in Calgary who identify as belonging to the Latin American community. Of course, not all Spanish speakers will be writers, but participants will be excited to invite their family and friends to celebrate their involvement in the program.