Writer in Residence 2010
Writer in Residence 2010
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 26 2010 Whistler, BC – A multiple-award winning author, poet, and journalist, who has taught writing (fiction and poetry) at the University of British Columbia, Malaspina University, and the Victoria School of Writing, will be Whistler’s 5th writer in residence, basing himself out of the Station House on Alta Lake for the fall to work one-on-one with ten writers.
Brian Brett is one of BC’s most acclaimed writers and has published 12 books (memoir, poetry, non-fiction, short stories, and novels) over his 35 year writing career. He is a freelance journalist, critic and columnist, inaugurated the BC Poetry-in-the-Schools program and served as Chair of The Writers’ Union of Canada.
For the past 18 years, Brett has tended a small farm on Saltspring Island, affectionately named Trauma Farm, about which he wrote in his most recent book, which won the 2009 Writers’ Trust of Canada Non-Fiction Prize, the BC Booksellers’ Choice Award, the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award in the Nature category and was hailed as a top 100 book of 2009 by Amazon.com, the Globe and Mail and the Times Literary Supplement.
Trauma Farm champions the fate of rural Canada, the small farm and the simpler life on offer with what JB McKinnon calls “the fearless tongue of a gumboot poet offering romance of a different kind: a hard-earned love of chaos, the absurd, and beauty gilded with sorrow.”
Brian Brett is the 5th Writer in Residence brought to Whistler by the Vicious Circle, Whistler’s Writers Group, following in the footsteps of Paulette Bourgeois (2007), Candas Jane Dorsey (2008), and Wayne Grady and Merilyn Simonds (2009) who will return to the 2010 Writers Festival to read from their new book, Breakfast at the Exit Café: Travels in America, which was partially written in Whistler during their residency.
Novice, emerging and experienced writers of all genres interested in taking part in the residency program need to register online at www.theviciouscircle.ca. Registration opens July 29th at 8 a.m.
Residency participants will receive four one-on-one sessions with Brett to develop their manuscript, and will also be able to attend group lectures on various aspects of the craft of writing. With only 10 spots available, and the residency costing just $250, places are expected to fill quickly. The residency will run from September 15th to October 15th.
The residency forms the manuscript-intensive component of the Whistler Readers and Writers Festival, which has moved this year in the calendar thanks to a new partnership with the Vancouver International Writers and Readers Festival to October 14-16 2010. Full details of the Whistler Writers Festival 2010 program will be released in August 2010.
Stella Harvey, Tel: 604 932 4518, Stella25@telus.net www.theviciouscircle.ca
