Busy Times and Deadlines
Hello friends and writers,
We’re wishing you an inspiring and productive autumn!
VMI has been busy this fall, transforming and planning. As many of you know, Rachel Rose, who co-directed VMI with Elee Kraljii Gardiner through Covid and helped bring us online to an international writing community, is no longer with the program in that role. Happily, Rachel will continue to mentor while pursuing her other projects. We’re grateful for her steady help and commitment to a smooth transition to Elee’s sole directorship of both VMI and the VMI Betsy Warland Between Genres Award. We wish her all the best!
Our community is growing, too. We welcome Alison Braid-Fernandez as an administrator and assistant. You may see Alison’s name in correspondence, so please extend a warm welcome! Alison is returning to British Columbia from London and we’re delighted to have her with us.
Recent VMI alumnus Patrick Lucas led a workshop on social media for us in early October. We’re happy to see his film Dirt Relations: the story of the Indigenous Youth Mountain Bike Program screening in many different spaces and places. Check his IG @patricklucaswriter!
In October we celebrated the winner of the VMI Betsy Warland Between Genres Award with a ceremony at the Vancouver Writers Fest. Judge Steve Collis announced Armand Garnet Ruffo as the winner, with his bookThe Dialogues: The Song of Francis Pegahmagabow. Betsy Warland spoke about the importance of hybrid work at the end of the Blending Genres panel moderated by Elee with authors Canisia Lubrin, Sarah Leavitt, Alison McCreesh, and Michael Turner. It was a wonderful discussion of craft, perspective, and tactics for identifying the best ways to convey a book’s intent.
At the Writers Fest Leslie Hurtig also announced that Elee will be Vancouver’s seventh poet laureate beginning in January. Elee takes up this new role from the capable and community-oriented hands of Fiona Tinwei Lam whose legacy projects focussed on video poems and extraordinary amounts of outreach. During Elee’s term she will be inviting all to join her in a project, “Here, Hearing” that links sound with presence, inspired by the origins of poetry and Vancouver’s exceptional history of music, recording, and soundscape. She is very grateful for what she learned while being one of Rachel Rose’s poetry ambassadors during her laureateship in 2014-2017!
Our inaugural VMI Fellow, Pervin Saket, who travelled from India to join the International Writers Program at Iowa just experienced her first Halloween. We think she did a great job with her costume-she made a manuscript out of a dog bed! Congratulations to Pervin on the residency in Iowa!
November News
Our November 9 deadline is days away! We welcome alumni and friends to apply to the Six-Month Intensive beginning in January. If you know of someone looking for one-on-one engaged critical feedback delivered with care, please let them know about VMI. November 9 is also the date to apply for the fully funded Yosef Wosk VMI Fellowship. Check here for more details.
We have just a few seats left for Mark Winston’s workshop, Finding Your Footing: First Steps into Memoir takes place on November 23, 2024, 9:30am – 4:00pm PST, online (Zoom) This one-day online workshop, limited to eight participants, is designed for those in the early stages of memoir writing who want a strong start developing their idea with an emphasis on content, style and voice. This is a unique way to hone your idea with an extraordinary CNF author who can help you embark in the direction that suits you. Tuition is $150. Learn more here.
And in the spring, stretched gently over several weeks, Mark Winston leads an innovative workshop for those of you ready to reach out to agents and presses. Prepping Your Pitch: Practical Info for Sending Your Manuscript to Agents and Publishers. It runs from February 9 – April 6, 2025, online (Zoom) and the fee is $1500. Limited to eight participants, this workshop draws on the expertise and experience of VMI mentors Aren X. Tulchinsky, Gary Barwin, and Gurjinder Basran as well as a guest agent Rachel Letofsky of Cooke McDermid and publisher Jay MillAr of Book*hug Press. Participants will experience three levels of workshop dynamic: group feedback, paired peer workshopping, and personal mentorship from a published author, and then have the opportunity to present their idea to a panel of industry professionals. Info here.
As always, we love to match you with a mentor in SOLOS or VMI PRO throughout the year. And if you have an idea of something that would support your writing life, please let us know.
As the weather grows cooler and the days darker, we wish you good writing time!