Online courses this spring: Introductory, Next Step, and Intensive creative writing, plus Writing Kid Lit: Picture Books to Young Adult Novels

Welcome to Creative Writing

10 weeks of discovering your creative side
Offered at two times:

Thursday evenings, 7 – 9 p.m.

{not 6:30 – 8:30 as previously posted}

April 16 – June 25, 2020 (No class June 4)

This course was going to be in Oakville; it will now take place online.

And

Friday afternoons, 1:15 – 3:15

April 10 – June 19 (No class June 5)

This course was going to be in Toronto; it will now take place online.

This is your chance to take up writing in a warm, supportive environment. This course will open the door to writing short stories and writing dialogue, writing in first person and writing in third person, writing just for fun and writing all kinds of things. You’ll get a shot of inspiration every week and an assignment to keep you going till the next class. Best of all, this class will provide a zero-pressure, totally safe setting, where your words will grow and flower.

The course will focus on writing prose, but for one class, we will have a distinguished poet for our guest speaker:

Elizabeth Crocket is an author and poet. Her Japanese short form poetry has been published internationally and in most of the leading journals. She had two chapbooks published with Red Moon Press. One of them, Not Like Fred and Ginger, was shortlisted for the prestigious American Haiku Foundation Touchstone Distinguished Book Award.

She currently has two poetry books, Wondering What's Next and How Soon the Colour Fades, published with Cyberwit.net. It was just announced that her first children's picture book, Happy Haiku, published with Crimson Cloak Publishing, has also been shortlisted for the American Haiku Foundation Touchstone Distinguished Book Award. 
Visit Liz online here. 

Fee:  $176.11 plus 13% hst = $199

To reserve your spot, email: brianhenry@sympatico.ca

Author Sylvia McNicoll

Writing Kid Lit

~ Picture Books to Young Adult Novels

Thursday afternoons, 12:45 – 2:45

April 16 – June 18 (No class June 4)
This course was going to be in Burlington; it will now take place online.

From picture books to young adult novels, this weekly course is accessible for beginners and meaty enough for advanced writers. Through lectures, in-class assignments, homework, and feedback on your writing, we’ll give you ins and outs of writing for younger readers and set you on course toward writing your own books.

We’ll have two published children’s authors as guest speakers: 

Sylvia McNicoll is the author of over thirty books, many of which have garnered awards. Her most recent YA novel, Body Swap, won the 2019 Hamilton Literary Award for Fiction. Crush.candy.corpse was shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis YA Crime Novel of the Year Award, the Red Maple Award, the Manitoba Young Readers' Choice Award, and the Snow Willow Award, and was selected as one of the Ontario Library Association's Best Bets and Resource Links' Year's Best for 2012. 

Most acclaimed, though, are her three middle grade books about fostering guide dogs:  Bringing Up Beauty, Beauty Returns, and A Different Kind of Beauty which won and were nominated for many children’s choice awards. See the trailer here.

In 2019, Sylvia completed her middle grade series The Great Mistake Mysteries by adding the Diamond Mistake Mystery (see the trailer here). The three earlier books in this series were: The Best Mistake Mystery, The Artsy Mistake Mystery, and The Snake Mystery foreign rights for which were recently sold to Russia.

Author Kira Vermond signing books

Kira Vermond is an award-winning writer with over 1,500 articles to her name. She has been a frequent contributor to the Globe and Mail, Chatelaine, CBC and Today's Parent.

Kira is the author of five nonfiction books for young readers {with a sixth on the way}:  Why Don’t Cars Run on Apple Juice (more here); Half-Truths and Brazen Lies, (more here); Why We Live Where We Live (more here); Growing Up: Inside and Out (nominated for on Ontario Library Association Forest of Reading Award); and The Secret Life of Money: A Kid's Guide to Cash (which was my son’s and daughter’s favourite book  the year it came out, although my kids are four years apart). Plus, coming in March 2020: Trending: How and Why Stuff Gets Popular (more here).

Fee:  $176.11 plus 13% hst = $199

To reserve your spot, email: brianhenry@sympatico.ca

Next Step in Creative Writing

10 weeks of growth as a writer

Tuesday afternoons, 12:30 – 2:45

April 14 – June 23 (No class June 9)

First readings emailed April 7

This course was going to be in Burlington; it will now take place online.

The Next Step in Creative Writing is for people who have been writing for a while or who have done a course or two before and are working on their own projects. Over the ten weeks of classes, you’ll be asked to bring in five pieces of your writing for detailed feedback. All your pieces may be from the same work, such as a novel in progress, or they may be stand alone pieces. You bring whatever you want to work on. 

Besides critiquing pieces, the instructor will give short lectures addressing the needs of the group, and in addition to learning how to critique your own work and receiving constructive suggestions about your writing, you’ll discover that the greatest benefits come from seeing how your classmates approach and critique a piece of writing and how they write and re-write. This is a challenging course, but extremely rewarding.

Fee: $184.96 + 13% hst = $209

To reserve your spot, email: brianhenry@sympatico.ca

Intensive Creative Writing

8 intense weeks of writing & critiquing

Offered online
With everyone indoors, lots of people want to sign up for my online courses, so I’m offering this extra session of Intensive Creative Writing …
April 28 – June 16 {and if the course fills up, we’ll extend it a week to June 23}
First readings emailed April 21

Intensive Creative Writing isn't for beginners; it's for people who have been writing for a while or who have done a course or two before and are working on their own projects. Over the eight weeks of classes, you’ll be asked to bring in four pieces of your writing for detailed feedback – including two longer pieces. All your pieces may be from the same work, such as a novel in progress, or they may be stand alone pieces. You bring whatever you want to work on. 

Besides critiquing pieces, the instructor will give short lectures addressing the needs of the group, and in addition to learning how to critique your own work and receiving constructive suggestions about your writing, you’ll discover that the greatest benefits come from seeing how your classmates approach and critique a piece of writing and how they write and re-write. This is a challenging course, but extremely rewarding.
This course will be done live online. To participate, you'll need a computer connected to the Internet, with a microphone and, for preference, a camera.

Fee: $176.11 + 13% hst = $199

To reserve your spot, email: brianhenry@sympatico.ca

Instructor Brian Henry has been a book editor and creative writing instructor for more than 25 years. He publishes Quick Brown Fox, Canada's most popular blog for writers, teaches creative writing at Ryerson University and has led workshops everywhere from Boston to Buffalo and from Sarnia to Saint John. Brian is the author of a children’s version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Tribute Publishing). But his proudest boast is that he’s has helped many of his students get published. 

Read reviews of Brian's various courses and workshops here (and scroll down).

See Brian’s complete schedule here, including writing workshops, weekly writing classes, and weekend retreats in, Bolton, Barrie, Brampton, Burlington, Caledon, Collingwood, Georgetown, Georgina, Guelph, Hamilton, Jackson’s Point, Kingston, Kitchener-Waterloo, London, Midland, Mississauga, Oakville, Ottawa, Peterborough, St. Catharines, Southampton, Sudbury, Toronto, Windsor, Woodstock, Halton, Muskoka, Peel, Simcoe, York Region, the GTA, Ontario and beyond.