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Program Director
“Writing is a deeply solitary act yet we need the company of other writers.”
(from Betsy’s Being With Writers)
Betsy Warland has published 10 books of poetry, creative nonfiction and lyric prose. She has been the editor of four books of collected writing, and has taught creative writing across Canada and in the U.K. A private manuscript development consultant for seventeen years, she also teaches with Vancouver Manuscript Intensive. Her book of twenty-four essays on writing materials and concepts, Breathing the Page: Reading the Act of Writing, will be published by Cormorant Books in 2010. Visit Betsy’s website at www.betsywarland.com.
TWS 2010 Mentors
Anne Stone, a Vancouver-based teacher and novelist, is senior editor at Matrix Magazine and, as of fall 2007, holds a fiction imprint at Insomniac Press. She is the author of three novels: jacks: a gothic gospel, Hush, and, most recently, Delible. Delible, chosen as one of thirty-five “Books of the Year” for the Globe and Mail, tells the story of Melora Sprague, a 15-year-old girl whose sister is missing. The novel offers a glimpse into a sustained experience of uncertainty and, in so doing, explores how our identities exist in those traces we leave behind.
Anne Stone
Fiction 2009-2010
Ivan Coyote was born and raised in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. An award-winning author of five collections of short stories, one novel, two CD’s, four short films and a renowned performer, Ivan’s first love is live storytelling, and over the last thirteen years she has become an audience favourite at music, poetry, spoken word and writer’s festivals from Anchorage to Amsterdam. Ivan’s column, “Loose End” has appeared monthly in Xtra West magazine since 2001. Her first novel, Bow Grip, was released in the fall of 2006, and was awarded the Relit award for best fiction and named by the American Library Association as a Stonewall honor book in literature. Ivan recently completed an eight-month writer in residence at Carleton University in Ottawa, and is hard at work on her second novel. Her fifth collection of stories, The Slow Fix, was released in September, and has been nominated for a Lambda award.
Ivan Coyote
Narrative and Creative Non-fiction 2010
Rachel Rose’s first book, Giving My Body to Science, was a finalist for The Gerald Lampert Award, The Pat Lowther Award, and the Grand Prix du Livre de Montreal, and won the Quebec Writer’s Federation A.M. Klein Award. Her second book, Notes on Arrival and Departure, was published by McClelland & Stewart in 2005. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. Learn more about Rachel at www.rachelrose.ca.
Rachel Rose
Poetry and Lyric Prose 2009-2010
Past Mentors
The Writers Studio is a pleasure to participate in for several reasons. The workshops are beautifully small. And as a mentor I get to work closely with my writers for one full year–enough time to really see progress and watch it develop. On top of that, the studio creates a network of writers, including alumni from previous years, who inevitably cross-fertilize each other’s best talents. The absence of conventional grading impels a cooperative atmosphere where the work itself is always the primary focus. The writers’ enthusiasm raises the general quality of the work, and creates in TWS a life and culture of writing, including workshops, multiple readings, classes, and the more ineffable value that comes with knowing working writers and becoming familiar with their approaches to the work. It is a kind of learning that is both technical and social, and it is immensely pleasurable to be immersed in the world of literature that is TWS.
Wayde Compton
Narrative and Creative Non-fiction 2009
Being a mentor at TWS is a unique experience in teaching. The amount of one-on-one contact with student writers, the opportunity to work with people over an extended period of time and the overall community of the Studio make for a lively, exciting and extremely productive environment for writers to expand themselves as artists. I have been very impressed with the quality of writing I’ve read at TWS, and with the program as a whole. A writer interested in furthering their professional development should seriously consider what TWS has to offer.
Steven Galloway
Fiction Mentor 2008