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Join us on Thursday, November 5, 2009 2-4pm, in the third floor classroom of the Carnegie Centre at Hastings and Main Streets in Vancouver, to hear guest speaker and poet Fiona Tinwei Lam.

Fiona will read from her new book of poetry Enter the Chrysanthemum, lead writing prompts and discuss the writing life.   Everyone is welcome.

Fiona Tinwei Lam’s work has been published in literary magazines  across Canada (The New Quarterly, The Antigonish Review, Room, Prism International, The Fiddlehead, Prairie Fire, Grain, CV2, Event, Canadian Literature, Descant among others) and in over a dozen anthologies (Canada, U.S. and Hong Kong). Her work has also appeared on CBC Radio and in The Globe & Mail.  Her first book of poetry, Intimate Distances was a finalist for the Vancouver Book Award.  She is a co-editor of and contributor to the anthology, Lives: Writing and Mothering, published by McGill-Queens University Press. Her latest book of poetry is Enter the Chrysanthemum. More information is available on the author’s website: https://fionalam.net/

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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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Please check the “readings” page for the details!

Three SFU Writer’s Studio alumni, Clarissa P Green, Sandra Pettman and Elee Kraljii Gardiner (replacing John Mavin) will offer free, on-site Blue Pencil Consultations on 2-3 pages of your work-in-progress and answer your writing questions. Bookings are available from 11am to 2pm at the SFU Writing and Publishing Program table at the Word On The Street Festival Sunday, Sept 27, 2009 in the village at Library Square, Vancouver. Book your 15 minute consult now by calling Kim Hockey at 778-782-5093.

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The next Thursdays class begins September 17, 2009. Join us on the third floor of the Carnegie Centre at Hastings and Main St. in Vancouver at 2pm every Thursday afternoon until November 26. We will write and discuss our plans for the fall class, which include a virtual launch of “Thursdays 3.0” on this website and a launch and reading at the Brickhouse on Thursday, December 3, 2009.

This course will include writing prompts and techniques gleaned from the Andover Bread Loaf Program, a graduate course from the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College held on the campus of Phillips Academy Andover in Massachusetts. The program, for creative writing teachers and social change activists, encompasses theory by Paolo Freire, the liberation theologist, as well as techniques for getting students personally involved in the texts. For examples of terrific “I am,” and “I am from,” poems, which we will be writing this autumn, check out Andover Breadloaf graduate and spoken word artist Anthony Morales.

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Thursdays 2 Launch

The launch of the new chapbook, “Thursdays 2: Writings from the Carnegie Centre,” was a packed event. More than 70 people crowded into the Brickhouse to hear contributors read their pieces. The writers held the place captive with the touching and sometimes hilarious presentation of their work.

 

Co-editor John Asfour, in from Montreal especially for the event, capped off the night by reading his contribution, “Dealing With Big Words,” and was surprised to hear Henry Doyle’s piece about the impact of hearing John read at the Vancouver Public Library.

 

Here is a sampling of audience comments from sheets posted around the venue:

 

“The most passionate and fun reading I have been to in ages.”

 

“Fabulous and truly exciting- keep on the transformative work!”

 

“I love Brenda’s love and Muriel’s passion. Thank you! Please keep on writing!” 

 

“This was something very special – not the usual fare of writers’ groups where one can get comfortable. You shake things up in the best possible way.” 

 

The contributors enjoyed themselves, too. One wrote on the comment sheet, “Thank you for opening a door for me.”

 

Another quipped about Dr Asfour, “I liked the last guy – super rad!”

 

Thank you to Lindsay Bradford-Ewart for doing sound, and to Raoul Fernandes for videotaping the reading, which we hope to link to youtube in the coming days. We will soon have images from the book up and an expanded contributors page. Thank you for your comments and thoughts!

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On  Friday, June 26, 2009, 2-4pm at Rhizome Cafe, 317 Broadway (at Kingsway), RSVP to thursdayseditor@telus.net

 How do you protect the voice while sharpening the piece? Join the editors of “Thursdays: Writings from the Carnegie Centre” to discuss the process of sharpening your work. During the first hour, we will discuss the “before,” and “after,” of a published piece, pointing out the changes that took the writing from raw to polished. Learn how minimal changes can affect the message, when to dive deeper and when to stop fiddling. The second hour is for your questions and concerns. The workshop is free but any small donation to the chapbook or to rhizome cafe is welcome.

Dr. Asfour is Lebanese- Canadian poet and translator. He was the first writer-in-residence at the Historic Joy Kagawa house in 2009 and is the author of four books of poetry in English and two in Arabic. He resides in Montreal, where he has taught creative writing for 25 years. He translated the poetry of Muhammad al-Maghut into English under the title Joy Is Not My Profession (Véhicule Press), and he selected, edited and introduced the landmark anthology When the Words Burn: An Anthology of Modern Arabic Poetry, 1945–1987 (Cormorant Books).

 

Elee Kraljii Gardiner is a freelance writer and the editor of “Thursdays: Poems and Prose from the Downtown Eastside.” She is the 2009 Poetry Adjunct at SFU’s Writers Studio, where she studied creative nonfiction in 2006. She is the founder of Otter Press.

Please email thursdayseditor@telus.net to reserve a spot.

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We are launching the new chapbook on ThursdayJune 25, 2009 at 8pm at the Brickhouse Bar at 730  Main Street (near union in Chinatown). Please join us to hear the contributors read their work. This edition is special: it includes the work of more than 20 writers who have attended the Thursdays class and was edited by Elee Kraljii Gardiner and Dr. John Asfour, the poet whose visits have made such an impact in our writing community.

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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

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

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