Writer’s Jamboree Set to Start Thursday, Nov 19

A two-day schedule of panels and workshops for Downtown Eastside writers begins on Thursday, November 19, 2009 at the Carnegie Centre. Events include one-on-one editing sessions, two roundtables each day on writing-related issues, readings and an open mike. Come and talk with high-level editors and writers who are keen to answer your questions. The Writer’s Jamboree is part of the Heart of the City Festival and is funded by SFU’s Writing and Publishing Program, the Writer’s Studio, Friends of the Library, Carnegie Community Centre and VanCity. Click below to download the pdf schedule.

Jamboree poster OCT 09 v2

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Three Week Editing Workshop with Joanne Arnott

SFU and the Thursdays Writing Collective present an editing workshop with writer Joanne Arnott

The workshop will be held in three sessions- Nov 3, 10, 17, 2009
Tuesdays 4pm-6pm in the third floor classroom at the Carnegie Community Centre.

Please sign up in office, limit: 20 people, residents of the Downtown Eastside given first dibs. Contact Elee at thursdayseditor@telus.net with questions.

Nov 3 – Common trip-ups in spelling and punctuation
Nov 10 – Copyediting: how to polish your work line by line
Nov 17 – Substantive editing: how to track the big ideas in a piece of writing

All writers need to polish their work, no matter how talented they are. This special three-week workshop will teach you how to identify and deal with soft spots in your work. Discover when to let go of your work and move on and how to approach all of these with a happy heart.

Participants will come away with an understanding of how to edit their own, and others’, work, and a wider sense of the sorts of requests editors might make in different publishing situations. Please bring questions, pen and paper.

Métis/mixed blood writer Joanne Arnott has published six books and a chapbook, including Mother Time & Steepy Mountain: love poetry and Breasting the Waves: On Writing & Healing. She won the Gerald Lampert Award for her first book, Wiles of Girlhood (Press Gang) and has been a literary performer and publishing poet since the mid-1980′s. She has published in the Carnegie Newsletter and co-edited the Four Sisters Housing Newsletter with Peter Chau. Joanne has given writing workshops across much of Canada, and in Australia. Mother to five sons and one daughter, all born at home, she lives with her four youngest children in Richmond.

Brought to you by SFU and the Thursdays Writing Collective

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Vancity Community Grant News

The Writers Studio at Simon Fraser University, which sponsors the Thursdays class, received a grant for its second Writers’ Jamboree, scheduled for November 13 and 14, 2009 at the Carnegie Centre. The Jamboree is a two day program of workshops for Downtown Eastside writers with panels of high-level editors and writers offering their thoughts on how to forward one’s writing career. Thank you to Vancity for supporting emerging writers!

Elee Kraljii Gardiner, Vancity Branch manager Jan Dean and Director of the Writers Studio, Betsy Warland

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