News & Missives

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:

• Peter Dubé is the author, co-author, or editor of eleven books including the novels Hovering World and The City’s Gates, the short fiction collection At the Bottom of the Sky, the novella Subtle Bodies, which was a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award, and Conjure: a Book of Spells, a collection of prose poems that was shortlisted for the A.

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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?

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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?

…read more

Growing Room: A Feminist Literary Festival returns from March 1-4, 2018 at various venues in Vancouver, BC.

Betsy Warland will be at Growing Room on Saturday and Sunday, where she will be participating in and moderating panels, respectively.

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The inaugural Wild Writers Festival, presented by The New Quarterly, was held from Nov 3-5, 2017 in Waterloo, Ontario. Betsy Warland offered a sold out creative non-fiction workshop and was part of panel on the personal essay, alongside Alicia Elliott, Susan Olding, and Kyle Edwards.

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The 2018 Judith A. Markowitz Award for Emerging LGBTQ Writers is now open for submissions. Lambda Literary announced the news on Jan 4: “The Judith A. Markowitz Award honors LGBTQ-identified writers whose work demonstrates their strong potential for promising careers.

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Growing Room is Room magazine’s annual literary festival, a celebration of diverse Canadian writers and artists, and Betsy Warland is honoured to be included in the stellar lineup!

Growing Room: A Feminist Literary Festival will return this year from March 1-4!

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Refugium, an anthology of Poems for the Pacific, edited by Victoria Poet Laureate, Yvonne Blomer, has been longlisted for the 2018 George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature.

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Betsy Warland will judge The Malahat Review‘s 2017 Open Season Awards in the creative nonfiction category.

The Open Season Awards offer a grand total of $4500 in prize money in three categories: poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. 

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