teaching and mentorship
residencies, fellowships, and manuscript consultations
MY TEACHING STATEMENT
I love helping writers get to the root of what they want to say and how they want to say it. While first drafts may be primarily a solitary endeavour, the process of getting a piece to publication readiness benefits greatly from collaboration. Regardless of skill and experience, it’s easy to get lost in our writing. The solutions are nearly always with the author, so my job is to ask questions and provide the support to help you find them.
As an editor, developing character voice, honing unruly plotlines, and tightening language are some of my favourite activities. As a mentor, I have knowledge about the writing and publishing industry that can help you find a place for your project. My commitment to a safe, empathetic and rigorous working relationship with mentees will help you reach your creative goals.
Flying Books Mentorship Program
One on one personalized manuscript consultations
After the Flying Books School of Reading & Writing launched in 2017, some students told us they wanted more one-on-one time with their instructors. They felt that personalized advice would help them improve faster.
We listened!
We are pleased to announce our one-on-one sessions with professional writers of fiction, poetry, plays, and nonfiction. Like personal coaches, our mentors will focus on your goals and provide practical notes, exercises, and advice to take your writing project to a much higher level.
CUSTOMIZE YOUR PERSONAL WRITING WORKSHOP
Whether you’re working on polishing a few stories, poems, or revising your novel, script, or memoir, our mentors can help move your work toward publication.
You can use these 60-minute sessions to talk about your vision for your work, point out specific problems you’ve run into, and discuss your mentor’s suggestions. You can also ask for career advice, such as where to submit your piece, how to create a sustainable writing practice, how to query agents, and more.
Sessions start at $240 + tax.
Simon Fraser University 2019-2021
I am deeply honoured to have been a Doris and Jack Shadbolt Fellow in the Humanities as well as the Writer-in-Residence in 2019-2020.
I also taught several classes on the craft of writing short stories and climate-change writing to students at SFU during the dread plague year of 2020 and 2021.
About the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Fellowship in the Humanities
The Jack and Doris Shadbolt Fellowship in the Humanities Program exists to promote the practices of, and approaches to, the humanities and arts—broadly conceived—as important sites of creative and critical engagement with the major concerns of our times.
Jack and Doris Shadbolt Fellows in the Humanities will be engaged academic scholars, artists, knowledge keepers, practitioners or writers in the humanities and arts. Fellows will help us imagine how we can make the world we live in better through acts of world-making in the creative arts and/or publicly engaged scholarship in the humanities, in alignment with the fundamental values of advancing reconciliation and equity, diversity and inclusion, communication, coordination, and collaboration.
Find out more here.
Writer-in-Residence, The Berton House, Dawson City, Yukon. Winter 2019
Berton House is a cozy cottage situated on the edge of the historic northern town of Dawson City. With special roots as Pierre Berton’s childhood home, the residency has hosted 84 writers since it was launched in 1996 and has played an influential role in the publication of dozens upon dozens of manuscripts.
Poets, fiction writers, creative nonfiction writers, playwrights, and writers of children’s literature are invited to apply. Housing and travel costs to and from Dawson City are covered. Residents also receive a $9,000 honorarium, part of which may be covered by the Canada Council for the Arts’ Research and Creation grant program. Writers are required to deliver two public readings and encouraged to interact with the community during their stay.