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
 |
| 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
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
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
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.
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