2023 Writer in residence: Jenna Butler
September to November 2023
|
Dr. Jenna Butler (she/her) is an award-winning poet, essayist, and editor. She is the author of three critically acclaimed books of poetry, Seldom Seen Road, Wells, and Aphelion; a collection of ecological essays, A Profession of Hope: Farming on the Edge of the Grizzly Trail; and the Arctic travelogue Magnetic North: Sea Voyage to Svalbard. Her newest book, Revery: A Year of Bees, essays about beekeeping, climate grief, and trauma recovery, was a finalist for the 2021 Governor General’s Literary Award in Non-Fiction and a longlisted title for CBC Canada Reads 2023. Butler’s work in the environmental humanities has taken her around the world, including to Svalbard aboard an ice-class tall ship and, next year, to Oregon as a resident fellow for Oregon State University, Oregon Wild, and the Spring Creek Project. As a queer BIPOC writer and grower, she speaks internationally on equitable land access, diverse community-building, and reciprocal ecological relationships in farming. Butler is a retired professor of creative and environmental writing and an off-grid organic farmer in northern Treaty 6.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
manuscript consultations
The Writer in Residence will be available September to November 2023 for one-on-one manuscript/writer support. Whether you want a piece of writing reviewed or just sit down and chat about the writing process, and writing life, the Writer in Residence is here for you.
AWCS Members get one free manuscript consultation on a first come, first served basis. Additional consultations are $100.
Non-Members may also book a consultation for $100.
MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Instructions on Booking Your Consultation and Submitting Your Work:
1. Read these instructions and requirements carefully before booking your consultation and submitting your manuscript(s).
2. Book your consultation HERE. Please book ONE timeslot per member.
NOTE A. Consultations on September 21, September 22, October 20, and November 3 can be either ONLINE or IN PERSON. When you book a slot on these dates, please indicate if you would like to meet in person or online in the notes section at the time of booking. Consultations on all other dates will be held exclusively ONLINE via Zoom.
NOTE B. You do not need to create a Sign Up Genius account to book a consultation.
3. You will receive an email with information about your consultation within a week of booking, including the zoom link if you are meeting online.
4. Submit your manuscript(s) HERE.
Submission Requirements
Paid Consultations
There are a total of 45 FREE manuscript consultations. Paid consultations are available to the public. However, these are limited and dependent on capacity. Email us to request a paid consultation.
Important Links
Additional Notes
AWCS Members get one free manuscript consultation on a first come, first served basis. Additional consultations are $100.
Non-Members may also book a consultation for $100.
- ONLINE AND IN PERSON CONSULTATIONS AVAILABLE
- CONSULTATIONS RUN 50 MINUTES
- ALL FORMS AND GENRES OF POETRY, FICTION, NONFICTION, AND MEMOIRS ARE ACCEPTED
MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Instructions on Booking Your Consultation and Submitting Your Work:
1. Read these instructions and requirements carefully before booking your consultation and submitting your manuscript(s).
2. Book your consultation HERE. Please book ONE timeslot per member.
NOTE A. Consultations on September 21, September 22, October 20, and November 3 can be either ONLINE or IN PERSON. When you book a slot on these dates, please indicate if you would like to meet in person or online in the notes section at the time of booking. Consultations on all other dates will be held exclusively ONLINE via Zoom.
NOTE B. You do not need to create a Sign Up Genius account to book a consultation.
3. You will receive an email with information about your consultation within a week of booking, including the zoom link if you are meeting online.
4. Submit your manuscript(s) HERE.
Submission Requirements
- You MUST be an AWCS member to book a free manuscript consultation. You can only book one free slot. Information on paid consultations is outlined below.
- Consultations are 50-minutes long. Please be mindful of the time to allow for ample preparation in between consults.
- Manuscripts MUST be submitted as early as possible and no later than 7 days before the consultation date.
- Submissions MUST be no more than a total of TEN (10) pages of fiction, creative nonfiction, memoir, and/or poetry. You may submit more than one story or poem as long as the pieces collectively do not exceed the 10-page limit.
- You can upload up to ten files in one submission form. Each piece must be a separate file.
- Submissions MUST be in MS WORD (.doc or .docx). (Exception: You may submit .pdf files for content that requires specific word placements on the page. For example, if you are submitting shape poems, free verse, and/or playing with line breaks and white space in your prose or poetry.)
- Submissions MUST have the filename: FirstNameLastName_Title_MeetingMonthDay.doc (i.e. JennaButler_Revery_Sep1.doc)
- Manuscripts MUST have the following format:
- Use 12pt font size.
- Use the default/standard 1-inch margin on all sides of the word document.
- Use conventional publishing fonts: Times New Roman, Arial, Georgia (unless it is an artistic publishing choice to use a different font.)
- The document MUST be double-spaced.
- Include author name(s), manuscript title, and the genre on the first page.
- Place the following information in the header throughout the document: LastName_Title_PageNumber (i.e. Butler_Revery_Page8)
Paid Consultations
There are a total of 45 FREE manuscript consultations. Paid consultations are available to the public. However, these are limited and dependent on capacity. Email us to request a paid consultation.
Important Links
Additional Notes
- Want to change or cancel your booking? Go back to the sign up link or to the confirmation email you received after you booked. In it, you will see a link that says ‘Already signed up? You can change your sign up.’ Click that link to follow the steps to make changes to your sign up slot. Email us if you encounter any issues.
- Want to update your manuscript? You can use the same submission form link to resubmit. We will only keep the latest version of your documents.
EVENTS & WORKSHOPS
|
Coming to common groundFREE PUBLIC EVENT - potluck & lecture
Bring a potluck item to share. September 20, 2023 | 6-9pm | The Treehouse @cSpace Marda Loop - 4th Floor, 1721, 29th Ave SW Over the past three years, we have been divided from one another in so many ways: physical isolation, fear and illness, resources and scarcity, and worldview. Over the coming years, as we find ourselves in an increasingly unstable world and climate, we might be tempted to seek dividing lines out of anger and fear. One of the brilliant things about writing as a discipline at this point in history is that we can employ our literary skills to acknowledge difference, but also to find common ground. One of the powerful things about working with the land, too, is that ultimately, everybody needs to eat, and that people from vastly different lifeways and experiences can find support and community through the cultivation and sharing of food. This public lecture and potluck meal will draw together community from diverse backgrounds to share food and to hold space for a talk that links the growing and sharing of food for community resilience with the need to share our stories in divisive times. When times are hard, through our nourishment and our stories, one way forward might just be to lean into one another. |
|
Seasonal Celebration: Writing the EquinoxWORKSHOP #1
Saturday, September 23, 2023 | 10am-3pm | Inglewood Bird Sanctuary, 2425, 9th Ave SE If you write about the land, you already know that there are profound time markers in the year, and none more so than the shift of the seasons. This workshop will bring you out of the classroom and into the more-than-human world to observe, experience, and write about those shifts. Working with the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary and Nature Centre, we will spend a day exploring and chronicling the changing world of the autumn equinox. Which birds are coming and going at the Sanctuary on their way through to their wintering grounds? What are the sounds, scents, textures, and sights of the world at this crucial time of the year, and how do we as humans engage with and hold space for those shifts—or do we? How can we invoke these dynamic changes in the world around us in respectful, detailed ways in our land-based writing? Thoughtful pre-planning and accommodation will be made for bodies of all abilities to take part in this workshop. |
|
Lit Night with jenna butler - calgarySPECIAL EVENT
Friday, October 20, 2023 | Alexandra Writers' Centre Literary Salon, 460, 1721, 29th Ave SW Join us for this 60-minute storytelling session with Writer-in-Residence Dr. Jenna Butler. We all carry stories of home, whether those are of places we've lived in all our lives or places we've had to leave behind in search of new stories as immigrants and refugees. This workshop will empower you to tell the stories of the many homes and experiences you carry with you, using the stories of those earlier experiences as starting points to write about the places in which you find yourself now. |
|
The Writer's JournalWORKSHOP #2
Saturday, October 21, 2023 | Alexandra Writers' Centre Literary Salon, 460, 1721, 29th Ave SW Many of us already keep journals as ways of chronicling our days and experiences. Some of us may even take part in journaling exercises such as Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages, designed to get us engaged with, and in charge of, the unfolding of our days. But how many of us really allow ourselves to cut loose with creativity in our journals? These are safe spaces designed to allow us to explore, but do we really push the bounds of their capacity? This course will support participants in pushing beyond the boundaries of their current journaling practice. Instead of just writing down the day’s events and reflecting on them, we’ll explore the idea of the journal as a pre-production space, one that can serve as both reflective space and incubation space for the ideas for future projects. We’ll map and collage our ideas, incorporating found materials from our everyday lives and the natural world. Together, we’ll look at ways to make our journaling process even more rich and generative, the pages reflective of both writing and art, and full of ideas to expand upon in our writing practice. Initial materials will be provided, but all participants are encouraged to bring in magazines and stickers, coloured pens, pieces of fabric, natural materials, sheet music, maps, anything that speaks to you and the exploratory journaling work you want to practice. Set your imagination free on the page! |
|
LIT Lunch: TOOLs for a writing life SPECIAL EVENT
Friday, November 3, 2023 | 11-12:30pm | Alexandra Writers' Centre, 460, 1721, 29th Ave SW This lunch-and-learn session with Writer-in-Residence Dr. Jenna Butler will support you in setting yourself up for success by building a powerful foundation for your writing life. Learn how to bounce back into the game after rejections, build supportive community and find trusted writing colleagues, locate project funding to support your literary dreams, and apply for residencies in Canada and beyond to get the focused writing time we all crave. |
|
20,000-Word weekendEVENT
Saturday & Sunday | November 4 & 5, 2023 | 9am-9pm How many words can you write in 24 hours? Whether you have a new project in mind and want to kick off NaNoWriMo with a vengeance or have been feeling stuck, join us for an invigorating weekend and get words on the page. With special guest, AWCS Writer in Residence, Jenna Butler, Jenna will write with you, provide motivational talks, and generally keep up the creative energy when you think you have nothing left.
The event will run hourly and daily writing challenges, with prizes, and more. Snacks and lunch provided. Participants responsible for their own dinner. |
|
Telling our deep storiesWORKSHOP #3
Saturday, November 18, 2023 | ONLINE VIA ZOOM Gwendolyn MacEwen’s poem “Dark Pines Under Water” ends with the powerful line “There is something down there and you want it told.” What better way to dive into the concept of life writing than to delve into the tenebrous and layered heart of memory? Whether we’re writing from family memories, the story of a beloved home, a previous job, or an amazing trip that took us to places we never thought possible, learning to delve into our deep stories as writers can bring us to material rich in sensory detail and emotion. Drawing from writing teachers such as Anne Lamott and Natalie Goldberg, this workshop will support and encourage participants to respectfully and safely explore memories in order to be able to write about them in the form of memoir, travel writing, or personal essays. Participants will gain a variety of exercises and writing tools to be able to engage with memories and personal narratives and bring them to life for a strong literary purpose. This workshop steps beyond journaling and moves into the realm of learning to write about our personal stories for the purpose of engaging with a reading audience. Note: This is not a trauma-writing workshop, but as emotionally difficult events may absolutely arise during the writing of memoir or personal essays, trauma-informed resources and links to services will be available for participants. |
|
Lit Night with Jenna Butler - edmontonSPECIAL EVENT
Tuesday, November 28, 2023 | Daisy Chain Book Co, 12525, 102 Ave NW, Edmonton Join us for this 60-minute storytelling session with Writer-in-Residence Dr. Jenna Butler. We all carry stories of home, whether those are of places we've lived in all our lives or places we've had to leave behind in search of new stories as immigrants and refugees. This workshop will empower you to tell the stories of the many homes and experiences you carry with you, using the stories of those earlier experiences as starting points to write about the places in which you find yourself now. |
