2010 all meetings

JANUARY *

FEB. 1^st #

Submissions – Island Writer 8/1 – DEADLINE

History, culture and demonstration of Chapbooks

E-Publishing and her multi-media project Quillr

MAY 1^st #

Submissions – WRITING CONTEST – DEADLINE

Island Writer 8/1 Magazine Launch

Fiction – Finding inspiration in the work of others.

SEPT. 1^st #

Submissions – Island Writer 8/2 – DEADLINE

Lynne Van Luven - Creative Non-Fiction: Alive and Thriving on Vancouver Island.

Thank you for joining us as we announced the winners in the Victoria Writers' Society 9th Annual Writing Contest. Contest judges presented prizes to the top four entries in each category and winners read from their work.
Following the awards, author, editor and writing instructor Lynne Van Luven spoke about the state of creative non-fiction on Vancouver Island, and discussed recent successful books, publishers and strategies for getting your book published. She also touched on how to know if creative non-fiction is what you want to write.
Van Luven is an associate professor at the University Of Victoria Department Of Writing. She edited the anthology of personal essays entitled Nobody's Mother (TouchWood Editions, 2006), which in 2007 was nominated for two non-fiction awards. In September 2008, the "sibling anthology," Nobody's Father: Life Without Kids, was released by TouchWood, co-edited by Van Luven and Bruce Gillespie. Nobody's Father features essays by 23 men who re-interpret what it is like to live as 21st- century childless males. She and Gillespie are now editing a collection of essays about adoption entitled Somebody's Child. With Kathy Page she is also working on an anthology called Body Parts, to be published in 2012.
Van Luven is now researching a book of personal essays about aging with attitude, tentatively entitled Flesh Wounds.
Van Luven also kindly donated two of her books to the Society.

Victoria Poet Wendy Morton will speak about all that is possible for writers and how she got corporate Canada to sponsor her. She will also discuss how we can all imagine six impossible things before breakfast.
Wendy Morton believes that poetry is the shortest distance between hearts. She has five books of poetry, and a memoir, Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast, in which her adventures as a corporate sponsored poet are revealed. She has been WestJet's Poet of the Skies, Chrysler's Poet of the Road, and is currently sponsored by Fairmont Hotels, AbeBooks and Prairie Naturals Vitamins. Her latest book of poetry, What Were There Dreams, from Black Moss Press, is a book of photo-poems of Canada's history, commissioned by the Alberni Valley Museum.
She is the founder of Canada's Random Acts of Poetry, now in its 7th year, and is the recipient of the 2010 Spirit Bear Award and the Golden Beret Award. For her day job, she has been an insurance investigator for the last 28 years. She lives in Sooke, B.C. in a small house with a large garden. She is a raven watcher.

Robert J. Wiersema, writer, bookseller and reviewer, will speak on “Writing in the Real World.” His first novel, Before I Wake, was published in Canada by Random House Canada in 2006, and became a national bestseller. His 2009 novella, The World More Full of Weeping, was shortlisted for the Aurora Prize. Victoria resident Wiersema is also the event coordinator for Bolen Books.
Wiersema reviews regularly for Quill & Quire magazine, the Vancouver Sun and a number of other publications and media outlets, including the Globe and Mail and the Ottawa Citizen.
Born in Agassiz, British Columbia, Wiersema knew he wanted to be a writer from the age of 7 or 8. He studied creative writing at the University of Victoria, then moved on to English literature, graduating with an honours degree with a focus in post-structuralist literary theory and contemporary Canadian writing.
He now works in the book trade, bringing together authors and readers, and said the best thing he ever did for himself as a writer was to work for a bookseller. “There's a lot to learn from observing what real people read,” he wrote on his website.
Wiersema has no hobbies, just passions: books, music, film and family, he writes.
For The Green Man Review, he wrote that he wonders whether the cigars he smokes while he reads for review purposes are tax-deductible, and wishes he had the courage to find out. He is currently at work on his third or fourth first novel (these things are so hard to keep track of), and when he has a spare moment, he'll mow the lawn. Honest! http://robertjwiersema.com/

Island Writer 8/2 Magazine Launch

 N.B.

• X no meeting (July and August)
• * no speaker invited (January, May, July, August, and December)
• # submission deadlines (February 1st, May 1st, and September 1st)