JustWrite in the Mountains 2019

JustWrite in the Mountains

Black Cat Guest Ranch, October 18-20, 2019

Writing Workshops or Writing Retreat

Deadline September 30, 2019*

For Ages 18+

Staggered payments option available upon request to info@youthwrite.com

Workshop Option:

Double Occupancy Regular Rate: $505

Please note that we have NO MORE single rooms at this time, though some may become available closer to the date of the weekend. If you'd like to be placed on a waiting list for a single room, please email us at info@youthwrite.com

Workshop options include Friday/Saturday accommodation plus:

• Friday evening JustWine&Cheese

• Saturday/Sunday workshops

• Instructor/participant readings

• Two breakfasts

• Two lunches

• Saturday Dinner

• Snacks, Coffee, Tea

Retreat Option:

Double Occupancy Regular Rate: $415

Retreat options include Friday/Saturday accommodation plus:

• Friday evening JustWine&Cheese
• Time to write and dream

• Instructor/participant readings

• Two breakfasts

• Two lunches

• Saturday Dinner

• Snacks, Coffee, Tea

September 30th - deadline for applications

Do you have a wellness account through employer benefits? Whether your reason for attending is for professional development or personal interest, the cost of your JustWrite experience could be eligible for reimbursement!

To register, JustWrite applicants must...

1) Submit an online application form by clicking the button above :

For workshop applicants ONLY (retreat applicants, please skip and move to #3)!

2) Submit a writing sample via email at info@youthwrite.com

Applicants must submit one poem (max. 75 lines)

a sample of prose (max. 2 pages), on a theme or subject of your choice.

Writing samples MUST be word processed, 12-point font, double-spaced.

DO NOT submit originals; samples will not be returned.

Please submit only ONE writing sample.

3) Submit fee payment, by one of the following means:

Email via e-transfer

(send to info@youthwrite.com)

Online via PayPal:

(please note that an approximate 3% service charge is applied by PayPal)

JustWrite in the Mountains WORKSHOP Double Occupancy - CLICK HERE

JustWrite in the Mountains RETREAT Double Occupancy - CLICK HERE

Cheque made payable to YouthWrite Society Canada sent to:

YouthWrite Society Canada

10629 – 127 Street

Edmonton, AB T5N 1W2

*All fees include a $100 non-refundable fee.

No refunds will be made if registration is cancelled after our September 30th deadline.

YouthWrite Society Canada reserves the right to cancel courses, substitute instructors and restrict enrollment.

The JustWrite Team:

Instructors:

Myrl Coulter is an award-winning Edmonton author of three published books, with several more in the making. The House with the Broken Two: A Birthmother Remembers, won the 2010 First Book Competition and the Canadian Authors Association Exporting Alberta Award for 2012. Myrl's second book, A Year of Days, was an IPPY (Independent Publisher Book Award) bronze medallist for 2016. Her third, The Left-Handed Dinner Party and Other Stories, is a collection of connected short stories about ghosts, absence, and family secrets. Forthcoming projects include a novel about six generations of mothers and daughters, and a personal narrative consisting of prose vignettes and poetry. A former National Screen Institute Drama Prize winner, Myrl often mentors emerging writers, leads and participates in creative writing workshops wherever and whenever she can, and is a certified meditation guide.

Writing With All Senses Firing - Our eyes are cameras, our ears microphones. Our tongues, noses, and fingertips are wired to our memories, imaginations, intuitions, and the 60,000 thoughts each one of us has in a day. This session will consider productive strategies for involving all six senses in our writing, including individual “stupid-staring” time and round-table sharing with the group. A short meditative routine will take us into a mindful awareness and optimize access to our sensory inventory. Writing exercises designed to generate new material will inspire fresh scene-building where our narrative purposes emerge; where our characters come alive, aspire, fail, fight, and dream; where our stories coalesce and deepen.

Conni Massing is an award-winning writer who also works steadily as a story consultant and teacher. She has over twenty theatre premieres to her credit and has also written for film and television. Conni’s published work includes six of her plays, magazine articles, and a comic memoir, Roadtripping: On the Move with the Buffalo Gals. Her writing has been recognized by AMPIA, the Academy of Cinema and Television, the Betty Mitchell Awards, the Writers Guild of Alberta and the Elizabeth Sterling Haynes Awards.

Creating Exceptional Characters - Exceptional characters grab our attention the moment they’re introduced and never let go. Whether you’re hoping to deepen characterization in your work-in-progress or just beginning to imagine a story premise, this writing intensive will inspire the creation of complex and engaging characters as we investigate considerations of physicality, psychology and sociology. Techniques shared from a playwriting perspective will also help you authenticate characters with effective dialogue and activate them by exploring the desires that power their journey through the story.

JustWrite Coordinator

Gail Sidonie Sobat is a multi-award-winning teacher and author, with eleven books for children, teens and adults, and a number of educational and academic articles. She is the YouthWrite and JustWrite creator/ coordinator, an international presenter, an instructor in the professional writing program at MacEwan University and in the Faculty of Education at U of A, is The Writers' Union of Canada Regional Representative for Alberta, NWT and Nunavut, and was writer in residence with the Metro Edmonton Federation of Libraries (2015). Gail is a 2016-2017 Global News Woman of Vision and a 2017 Arts and Culture Citation Award recipient. She has moved thirty-two times in her life from Badlands to Siksika Nation Reserve to hideous suburbs to Istanbul to the Sunshine Coast to her writer’s garret in a century-old temperamental house.

Theodora MacLeod was born with stars in her eyes and rocks in her pockets and has spent her life all over Alberta and Atlantic Canada. Having written her first book at age eleven, she set her sights on the literary world at a young age and hasn’t looked back. A journalism student by trade and a daydreamer by hobby, Theodora enjoys spending her nights with her cat, Claude Giroux, and looking at real estate online. Recently published in The Bolo Tie Anthology IV and credited as an editor, she is looking forward to the day her trilogy, Love & Mercy, is published under her pen name, Atlee Bloom.