Researching Your Book (4 weeks): Tuesdays beginning September 24
Instructor: Lezlie Lowe
Course description: All books require research. Whether fiction or nonfiction; experimental or explanatory; memoir, historical fiction, or sci-fi — research lends manuscripts authorial power, scenic strength, and a narrative foundation. Researching Your Book is a four-week virtual workshop for fiction and nonfiction book writers at all stages of their practice who want to solidify their research paths and forge onto unknown trails. Workshop participants will look at the merits of primary and secondary documents and gain useful tools for accessing those resources. Participants will also consider the deep value of researching ephemera and connecting with human sources, as well as the importance of being in the places they are writing about … even if those places don’t actually exist.
Lezlie Lowe teaches in the School of Journalism, Writing & Publishing at the University of King’s College, the Dalhousie University Creative Writing program, and in the King’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction program. Her first book, No Place To Go: How Public Toilets Fail Our Private Needs, was listed as a top-25 pick by CBC Books and The Toronto Star, and one of the top 100 books of the year by the Globe and Mail. The Volunteers: How Halifax Women Won the Second World War was released in 2022.
Brittany Foster is a professional freelance writer and editor living in Nova Scotia, Canada who has been working in content marketing for over a decade. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of King’s College and a Publishing Certificate from Toronto Metropolitan University. With one foot in the print publishing world and the other in digital, her writing, editing, and marketing bylines span a wide variety of publications such as a bestselling historical fiction trilogy, a horror anthology, the Nature Conservancy of Canada, Jane Friedman, and the Creative Nonfiction Collective.
francesca ekwuyasi is a is a learner, artist and storyteller born in Lagos, Nigeria. She was awarded the Writers Trust Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers in 2022 for her debut novel Butter Honey Pig Bread (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020). Butter Honey Pig Bread was also shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award, the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Amazon Canada First Novel Award and longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Dublin Literary Award. Butter Honey Pig Bread placed second on CBC’s Canada Reads. Canada’s Annual Battle of the Books, where it was selected as one of five contenders in 2021 for “the one book that all of Canada should read.”
Wanda Taylor is an award-winning writer, filmmaker, screenwriter, and college professor. As an author of fiction and nonfiction, Wanda writes across both children’s and adult markets. Her middle grade novel, The Grover School Pledge, was the 2023 recipient of the Northern Lights Middle Grade Book of the Year Award and is nominated for the Hackmatack Book Award. Wanda has produced a variety of content as a former CBC producer, news journalist, and documentary filmmaker. Her work has also screened at festivals across the globe, on television, and on streaming platforms. As a freelance journalist, her features, essays, and poems appear in publications across Canada, the US, and the UK; including the Globe and Mail, Quill & Quire, and Atlantic Books Today. As a former Acquisitions Editor, Wanda acquired and championed titles from seasoned and emerging writers. She continues to support the work of Canadian writers as a freelance editor and as mentor for various organizations; including The Writer’s Union of Canada. Besides teaching a journalism course at Kings College, Wanda also serves as a Fiction Mentor for Kings’ MFA Writing and Publishing Program. She also teaches courses in screenwriting, journalism, and documentary filmmaking in Toronto.
Adrienne Gruber is an award-winning writer originally from Saskatoon. She is the author of five chapbooks, three books of poetry, including Q & A, Buoyancy Control, and This is the Nightmare, and the creative nonfiction collection, Monsters, Martyrs, and Marionettes: Essays on Motherhood. She won the 2015 Antigonish Review’s Great Blue Heron poetry contest, SubTerrain’s 2017 Lush Triumphant poetry contest, placed third in Event’s 2020 creative non-fiction contest, and was the winner of SubTerrain’s 2023 creative non-fiction contest. Both her poetry and non-fiction has been longlisted for the CBC Books awards. In 2012, Mimic was awarded the bp Nichol Chapbook Award. Adrienne lives with her partner and their three daughters on Nex̱wlélex̱m (Bowen Island), B.C., the traditional territory of the Coast Salish peoples.