Here’s our latest newsletter, full of accomplishments, new books, awards, exciting events and collaborations! Please share and support our VMI community in whatever ways suit you–reposting on social media, buying books, sending the authors a note, or attending an event.
Join us for a celebration reading by the 2021 VMI cohort on Zoom!
We are delighted to showcase the accomplishments of this unique group on completion of the six-month program and invite you to gather with us across time zones to listen.
Welcome to the VMI newsletter highlighting the accomplishments, publications, and writing-related news from the VMI community.
Susan Olding has a new book, Big Reader, Essays from Freehand Books.
We support community health and want to ensure writers are best equipped to present their material.
Given the difficulties surrounding Covid-19 and social distancing, VMI has cancelled the June public group reading. In light of the unforeseen turn of events we have converted this loss into a gain: two extra hours of mentoring in which authors can attend to extra editing, conversation, or questions with their mentors.
Betsy Warland was a featured poet for Jane’s Walk, a citizen-led walking tour. Jane’s Walk on Saturday, May 5 was hosted by Kevin Spenst.
Jane’s Walk, in honour of Jane Jacobs, is “a community-based approach to city building that uses citizen-led walking tours to make space for people to observe, reflect, share, question and re-imagine the places in which they live, work and play.”
Jane’s Walks take place in many cities across the world.
Have you ever had questions about faith or religious practice?
On March 13 at VPL, join Susan Scott, editor of Body and Soul: Stories for Skeptics and Seekers and an all-female panel of contributors including Dora Dueck, Pam Johnson, Jonina Kirton, Lori McNulty, Betsy Warland as they break the age-old code of silence and explore open conversations about the messiness of faith, practice, religion and ceremony.
Submissions are now open for this year’s Literary Writes poetry contest sponsored by the Federation of British Columbia Writers (FBCW). There will be two sections: a general category, judged by Fiona Tinwei Lam, and a 19-and-under youth category, judged by Renée Saklikar, both themed: “Who is ‘The Other’?”
Fiona Tinwei Lam has authored two poetry books and a children’s book.
The Writers’ Union of Canada launches its 26th annual Short Prose Competition for Emerging Writers, which invites submissions of fiction and nonfiction for a grand prize of $2500.
The Union is proud to announce an esteemed group of jurors for the Competition:
On Saturday, August 25, Betsy Warland and many writers gathered to protest the Kinder Morgan buyout and pipeline expansion in Burnaby, BC.
Writers met to share concerns about the threat to local waters; the federal government’s promise that toxic bitumen can be cleaned up when science says it can’t; the marketing of tar sands oil, adding hugely to climate change; the squandering of Canadian tax dollars on a plainly awful business deal; and the violation of the rights and titles of Indigenous peoples during this time of reconciliation.
Darrel J. McLeod launched his memoir, Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age (Douglas & McIntyre) on Sept 15, 2018 at the Native Education College (NEC). Vancouver Manuscript Intensive founder, bestselling author, and cross-genre writer, Betsy Warland, emceed the afternoon alongside Shaena Lambert, author of Oh, My Darling.
Jan Redford, VMI alumna and author of the memoir, End of the Rope: Mountains, Marriage, and Motherhood (Random House Canada, 2018) will be in conversation with Hal Wake, former director of the Vancouver Writers Festival and Angie Abdou, author of Home Ice (ECW Press, 2018) at 7 p.m.
The Malahat Review invites writers identifying as LGBTQ2S? to submit their work for consideration for an issue celebrating contemporary queer writing in Canada!
Guest editors Ali Blythe, Trevor Corkum, and Betsy Warland are interested in considering submissions of exciting contemporary LGBTQ2S?
