I’m excited by a new volunteer job that I’m about to start. Next week, I’ll begin volunteering at the Red Door Family Shelter in Toronto. Red Door offers help for families who are experiencing a housing crisis, families who are refugee claimants, and women and children who are escaping domestic violence. I’ll start by helping [...]
As Vice-President of CANSCAIP, I’ve been organizing the Blue Pencil Mentorship Program. It’s a terrific new program designed to connect emerging writers and illustrators for children with professional authors and illustrators. Through Blue Pencil, you can connect with an expert in your field, receive a personal critique of your work, and submit up to five follow-up [...]
If you’re interested in writing or illustrating for kids or teens, check out CANSCAIP’s Packaging Your Imagination conference, an annual day of workshops by experts in the field. This year, the conference will be held at Victoria College in Toronto on Saturday, November 6th. As Vice-President of CANSCAIP, I’m spearheading the committee to organize the day, and it promises to [...]
I’m looking forward to conducting a writing workshop at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto on March 2. It’s exclusively for patients of the hospital, but if you’re looking for an event that is open to the public, please join me for a reading at the Barbara Frum Branch of the Toronto Public Library at [...]
If you’re an aspiring author, you may want to check out this conference on November 7, 2009. Packaging Your Imagination, organized by CANSCAIP, offers a day of inspirational workshops with professional authors, illustrators and performers. This year, I’ll be there as a moderator for an “Ask the Pros” panel, where experts Marie Campbell (agent, editor), Peter Carver [...]
The 2009 Young Voices Magazine is here! This is my fourth year as an editor of this magazine of teen writing and art, published by the Toronto Public Library, and I’ve loved every minute of it. It excites me to think that the influential authors and illustrators of tomorrow may be first published within the [...]
Earlier this year, I decided I had enough free time to increase my volunteer activities. Just as I was making this decision, I got an offer I couldn’t refuse from one of my favourite organizations. I’m pleased to announce that starting November 2009, I’ll be vice-president of CANSCAIP – the Canadian Society of Children’s Authors, Illustrators, [...]
Writers between the ages of 12 and 19 are invited to join me for a free writing workshop at the Toronto Public Library Brookbanks Branch (210 Brookbanks Drive) on January 31, 2009, from 1 to 3 pm. Come play with words, find inspiration for new stories, and polish your prose for submission to the 2009 [...]
On October 16 at 7 pm, I’ll join the staff of the Toronto Public Library to celebrate the launch of Young Voices 2008, the library’s annual magazine for teen writing and art. As a guest editor of the magazine, I’m looking forward to congratulating the wonderful teen artists and writers whose work will appear in [...]
Teens are invited to a writing workshop on the theme of beauty and body image. Join myself and Patricia McCowan – authors from the short story collection Cleavage: Breakaway Fiction for Real Girls – at the Beaches branch of the Toronto Public Library on October 4 from 2 to 4 pm (2161 Queen St. East). [...]
Do you want to write for children or teens? Join me for a writing workshop on September 25, 2008, at Centennial College to learn how to generate ideas, develop believable characters, understand genres, edit your writing, and market and promote your work.
I just finished two awesome weeks of teaching WordPlayer writing workshops at Pegasus Studios Arts Camp in Toronto. Together we wrote and shared poems, created characters using masks, and invented stories about buried treasure. The kids and teens were super enthusiastic when we created our own imaginary worlds then wrote stories about them. They drew [...]
This July, I’ll be leading WordPlayers writing workshops for children and teens at the Pegasus Studios Arts Camp. If you like writing poems or stories, come play with words using masks, story dice, photos, character games, and more. For more information, go to Pegasus Studios.
In February 2008, teen writers joined me at the York Woods library in Toronto for a prose writing workshop. Participants expressed themselves through writing using a variety of stimulating activities designed to teach technique.
On October 20, 2007, I enjoyed a writing workshop with enthusiastic teen writers at the Young Voices Writers Conference. The event was held at the North York Central Library in Toronto. In my workshop, I focussed on how to revise a work of fiction, demonstrating my own revision process then discussing specific ways to polish prose with writing [...]