The Instructors for 2010 School of Writing
Margaret Sweatman is a playwright, lyricist and novelist. Her plays have been produced by Prairie Theatre Exchange, Popular Theatre Alliance, and the Guelph Spring Festival. She has performed with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra, and the National Academy Orchestra, as well as with her own Broken Songs Band.
She is the author of the novels Fox, Sam and Angie, and When Alice Lay Down with Peter, which won several awards including the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the McNally Robinson Book of the Year. Her most recent novel, The Players, is published by Goose Lane Editions (Fall 2009). Margaret Sweatman is an Assistant Professor at the University of Winnipeg.
 As a poet, Barbara Nickel is the winner of the Pat Lowther Award (best Canadian poetry collection by a woman) and The Malahat Review Long Poem Prize. Her most recent collection is Domain (2007). Earlier collections are The Gladys Elegies (1997) and From The Top Of A Grain Elevator (1999). Her work has appeared in many magazines, journals, and anthologies, most recently in The Walrus, and the anthology Open Wide a Wilderness: Canadian Nature Poems, and is forthcoming in the Alhambra Poetry Calendar 2010. Born in Saskatchewan, she now lives in British Columbia. Barbara is also an award-winning author of children’s books such as Hannah Waters And The Daughter Of Johann Sebastian Bach (2006) and The Secret Wish of Nannerl Mozart (1996). She has an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia, where she has also taught.
Anita Daher says “place” infuses her writing, and is grateful to have lived in communities like Summerside, PEI; Moose Jaw, SK; Churchill, MB; Baker Lake, NU; and Yellowknife, NT. Her short stories have appeared in Prairie Fire, and she is author of seven youth novels, including Arthur Ellis and Manitoba Book Award finalist Spider’s Song (2006), and Arthur Ellis, Hackmatack and Diamond Willow finalist Racing for Diamonds (2006). She has led workshops across the country, and has been a popular presenter at conferences and festivals. When not teaching, presenting, or working on her own stories, Anita edits teen novels for Great Plains Publications.
 Joanne Klassen sees Life Writing as a healing vehicle for both writers and readers as they discover the sacred or life-enriching moments between the peaks and valleys in the journey of a life.
The School of Writing at CMU’s Life Writing class gives non-career writers an ideal opportunity to retreat, relax, reflect, and move closer to their writing goals. This class gives students an opportunity to join an encouraging community of both new and experienced Life Writers whose support and feedback can elevate writing skills to new levels of mastery. The class will introduce experiential learning activities to the students designed to strengthen each writer’s natural voice, and increase both confidence and competence. Through a unique process called Transformative Writing™, the students will use a collection of twenty-five tools to glide past the “inner critic,” giving or restoring motivation and satisfaction to the writing process.
Since 1997 Joanne Klassen has helped hundreds of writers achieve their goals. She is founder and director of Winnipeg’s Heartspace Writing School, and originator of Transformative Writing. Joanne is the author and editor of a dozen books and anthologies including Tools of Transformation, Trouble in Grandpa’s Golf Bag, Family Tree and Learning to Live, Learning to Love, which was translated into Russian and Greek.
Note: No portfolio is required for the Life Writing class. Spaces for the Life Writing class will be filled on a first-come, first-serve basis.
|
