2024 Governor General’s Finalists

This year, Brandi Bird (left) and six other BC-based authors made it to the shortlist of the GG’s Literary Awards within four categories. Read about the finalists and their work here.FULL STORY

 

2022 Fed of BC Writers’ Summit

May 02nd, 2022

The Federation of BC Writers is hosting it writers’ summit online this year, running from May 14 – 21.

A variety of presenters, international, national and local are in the schedule including the award-winning B.C. authors Yasuko Thanh and Gail Anderson-Dargatz.

Yasuko Thanh (at right) headlines the session In the Eye of the Storm: Finding Our Best Stories.

Description (from the schedule): “Ideas are everywhere. But how to find the best one? Everyone has heard of brainstorming as a way to generate ideas. In this session, participants will practice a similar but different technique known as “clustering.” We’ll begin with an introduction to automatic or freefall writing, and then we’ll visit the storms in our brain and “cluster” to find our own best stories. If you’d like to explore how “clustering” can be used to find the stories you are meant to be writing, this session is for you!”

Yasuko Thanh is an award-winning novelist and short story writer from Vancouver Island. She won the 2009 Journey Prize for the title story in her collection Floating Like the Dead. Her first novel, Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains, a historical tale set in Vietnam, won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize in 2016. Her best-selling memoir, Mistakes to Run With, reflects on her journey from a runaway to prostitute to a successful writer. She lives in Victoria with her daughter, and is at work on a novel to be published by Penguin Random House in 2023.

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Gail Anderson-Dargatz

Gail Anderson-Dargatz headlines the session Writing hi-lo books for the educational market.

Description (from the schedule): “People think writing for kids is easy, but any writer who publishes children’s or YA fiction will set you straight: writing for kids is hard. Writing hi-lo books for striving readers is even harder, but also highly rewarding, and there is a growing market for high interest, low reading-level books. In this interactive workshop, award-winning novelist Gail Anderson-Dargatz will talk about the craft involved in writing hi-lo books, a vibrant market that many writers aren’t aware of.”

Gail Anderson-Dargatz’s international bestsellers, The Cure for Death by Lightning and A Recipe for Bees were both finalists for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, among other awards. A Recipe for Bees was also nominated for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. The Spawning Grounds was nominated for the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, the Ontario Library Association Evergreen Award, and was short-listed for the Canadian Authors Association Literary Award for fiction. Her very first book, The Miss Hereford Stories, was short-listed for the Stephen Leacock Humour Award. Her new novel, The Almost Wife, a commercial thriller, hit the Canadian bestseller lists in 2021. Her next thriller, The Almost Widow, will be released by HarperCollins in 2023.

 Details for the summit:

  • Most sessions will be recorded and available to registrants for a 2-week period after the summit.
  • Like last year, the summit will have multiple events per day that are spaced out to provide breaks between sessions.
  • Events will be hosted at 10am, 1pm, and 7 pm.
  • Participants will receive a daily zoom link that can be used for all events on that day.
  • Digital doors open 5 minutes before the event is to begins

Pricing:

  • SUMMIT PASS: MEMBER RATE: $99*
  • SUMMIT PASS: NON-MEMBER RATE: $129
  • SUMMIT PASS + 1 YR REGULAR MEMBERSHIP: $179
  • SUMMIT PASS + 1 YR SENIOR (65+) MEMBERSHIP: $144

For more information and to register, visit: https://www.bcwriters.ca/BCsummit

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