Join me for a free, in-person Memoir Workshop sponsored by the Writers Guild of Alberta.

A Vocation to Write: Sharing Your Words, Your SELF, with Community

Join paulo da costa for an in-person memoir workshop: Memoir as Medicine for the Heart, in Calgary, where he will explore the complexities of sharing oneself with the world through words.

Memoir Workshop, facilitated by paulo da costa

Saturday, September 23rd, 11 AM – 12:30 PM | In-Person | Free Event

Alexandra Writers’ Centre Society, 1721 29 Ave SW Unit 640, Calgary, AB T2T 6T7

Register at the WGA website using the form found at the bottom of this link https://writersguild.ca/alberta-culture-days-a-vocation…/

Memoir as Medicine for the Heart

Writing with candour about family and communities of affection may be a challenging endeavour. Memoir also offers the potential to enlighten and reward past experiences with insight and understanding, illuminating and perhaps even healing the heart. When owning the subjective perspective and experience as your own, writing on difficult and intimate subjects can still prompt feelings of discomfort and pain for all involved. How much should you reveal about your personal history and inner feelings when the web of connections is so complex, and family and community lives intersect in both obvious and unseen ways? Truth, kindness, and revelation are the medicinal ingredients paulo incorporates to honour those he writes about, as well as the wounds he may come upon, in himself and in those unwittingly brought to the page. Come explore the journey of writing Memoir with paulo da costa, two-time award-winning author of creative non-fiction. His memoir, Trust the Bluer Skies: Meditations on Fatherhood, is forthcoming in 2024 with University of Regina Press.

Born in Angola, and raised in Portugal, paulo da costa is a writer, editor and translator living in Canada. He is twice the recipient of the James H. Gray Award for Short Nonfiction (2023 and 2020), the 2003 Commonwealth First Book Prize for the Canada-Caribbean Region, the W. O. Mitchell City of Calgary Book Prize and the Canongate Prize for short-fiction. His poetry, fiction and nonfiction have been published widely in literary magazines around the world and translated into Italian, Spanish, Serbian, Slovenian and Portuguese. The Midwife of Torment is his latest book of fiction, and Trust the Bluer Skies: Meditations on Fatherhood, a book of creative non-fiction, is forthcoming in 2024 with University of Regina Press.

Find paulo online: paulodacosta.ca | FB: paulo.dacosta.73550 | TW: paulocostaautor | IG: paulodacostaauthor | Good Reads: 3519403.Paulo_da_Costa

Keynote Address & Teaching the Short Story State of Mind at AWC

Get Lit Writer Series – Alexandra Writers Centre

With award-winning authors like Alice Munro, Haruki Murakami, George Saunders, Kurt Vonnegut, there is so much to love and learn. Spend a day Getting Lit on short stories. Learn craft, process, publishing and so much more. Guaranteed to put you in that Short Story State of Mind.

May 27, 2023
9-5pm
AWCS Members: $150 | Non-Members: $200

Keynote & Presenters
paulo da costa | Lee Kvern | Leslie Greentree |
Sarah L. Pratt | Robert Bose

Note: Participation in Get Lit is entirely IN PERSON.
Full schedule with times will be available to participants.

Blue Pencil Sessions with Your Favourite Presenter
Submit up to 1500 words of a short story to your favourite presenter and get some valuable feedback on what’s working, what needs help, where to submit and more. If you don’t have anything to submit but would like some one-on-one time to talk about process or the trials and tribulations of the writing life, book a spot today. Book your blue pencil at time of registration.
Submissions need to be in by May 19, 2023.

MORNING KEYNOTE

Time is of the Essence – Compressed Narratives of the Future (Treehouse)
paulo da costa

In these times of diminishing leisure and compressed communication methods, short-stories lend themselves particularly well to the new portable technologies of smartphones, ereaders, tablets, etc… which serve the needs of people on the run. The advent of the new social and visual media has trained a generation of readers to hold short attention spans and to favour lean narratives with sudden impact. Short narratives will continue to gather more aficionados and likely become the more prevalent structure for written storytelling. The short form will meet the future generation’s interest for memorable fiction that explores contemporary issues relevant to their concerns.

WORKSHOPS

Compelling Incantations (Treehouse)
paulo da costa

How shall I deliver a compact and compelling narrative that will brim with meaning and engage readers living under time pressures? A narrative distilled to impactful emotional moments will leave lasting impressions on a reader’s mind. I write what I know and I write what I don’t know. To surprise the reader I too must surprise myself in the writing process. I strive for characters in stories that engage with larger societal issues that matter to individual concerns and to our collective futures and will draw readers seeking insight, meaning and relevance. Do I want to be on the side of hope or despair? Do I want to inspire action or resignation? Insight or mindless entertainment? I will explore what it takes to write on the road less written.

Leslie Greentree

TBA

The Fictional Beauty of Authentic Detail (Treehouse)
Lee Kvern

Enhance the language and voice of your short stories by the use of authentic details, which include everything from google research to YouTube to utilizing the kitchen sink of your own life and others. Authenticity meets plausibility no matter the fictional aspect of your short story.

The More the Merrier: Collaborative Writing (Treehouse)
Sarah L. Pratt & Robert Bose

What do Good Omens, The Guersney Literary and Potato Peel Society, The Talisman, and anything by Christina Lauren, Lars Kepler, or Nicci French have in common? They are all collaborative writing projects. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to co-write a story? What are the different approaches? The benefits and drawbacks? And whose name goes first? Take a walk through the wacky wonderful world of growing your creativity through collaboration.

On Publishing: Literary Journals, Anthologies, Collections (Treehouse)
A moderated discussion with all presenters
End the day with all our presenters and explore the variety of publishing opportunities available to short story writers and how it might pertain to you. Learn about literary journals, anthologies, story collections and so much more.

KEYNOTE & PRESENTERS

paulo da costa is a writer, editor and translator living in Canada. He is the recipient of the 2020 James H. Gray Award for Short Nonfiction, the 2003 Commonwealth First Book Prize for the Canada-Caribbean Region, the W. O. Mitchell City of Calgary Book Prize and the Canongate Prize for short-fiction. His poetry, fiction and non-fiction have been published widely in literary magazines around the world and translated into Italian, Spanish, Serbian, Slovenian and Portuguese.

Learning to Shave, Learning to Leave, a book of creative non-fiction, is forthcoming with University of Regina Press. https://www.paulodacosta.ca/

Lee Kvern is a Canadian author of short stories and novels. Her stories in 7 Ways to Sunday have garnered various literary awards including the CBC Literary Prize. Afterall was selected for regional Canada Reads and nominated for the Alberta Books Awards. The Matter of Sylvie was nominated for Alberta Book Awards and the Ottawa Relit Award. Lush Triumphant finalist and recent Best of the Net nominee. Her work has been produced for CBC Radio, and has been published in numerous literary magazines across Canada and the US. She has currently finished her fourth novel Catch You on the Flipside, an international thriller.

Leslie Greentree is the author of four books – Not the Apocalypse I Was Hoping For (University of Calgary Press, Fall 2022), the award-winning short story collection A Minor Planet for You, and two poetry books: go-go dancing for Elvis, which was shortlisted for the 2004 Griffin Prize for Poetry, and guys named Bill. Leslie has won CBC literary competitions for short fiction and poetry, and the Sarah Selecky 2013 Little Bird short fiction competition.

Leslie is also a playwright, actor, and occasional essayist. “Tom Petty Just Isn’t There for You: Riffs on Waiting” was written before his death, and appears in Waiting: an anthology of essays (University of Alberta Press, 2018). Her essay, “Pink Smock Stories,” was shortlisted for a 2019 Writers Guild of Alberta award and the 2020 Humber Creative Nonfiction award.

Sarah L. Pratt is a curly hair gladiator, ultra marathoner, literary events wrangler, and queer fictioneer. Her stories have appeared in Vastarien, Room Magazine, Plenitude, On Spec, Shock Totem, Crossed Genres, Year’s Best Hardcore Horror Vol. 2 (Red Room Press), and the Bram Stoker Award nominated Dark Visions 1 (Grey Matter Press) and Twisted Book of Shadows (Haverhill Press). She’s the author of Suicide Stitch: Eleven Tales (EMP Publishing) the blasphemous apocalyptic thriller, Infractus (Coffin Hop Press), and co-author of Wall of Fire and co-author/co-curator of Forbidden Fruit (The Seventh Terrace).

Robert Bose grew up on a farm in southern Alberta spending every free moment reading Fritz Leiber, Karl Edward Wagner, and whatever pulp and dark fiction he could get his dirty hands on. He’s the editor of a variety of books and anthologies for Coffin Hop Press and The Seventh Terrace, and the author of myriad short stories including the fiendish collection, Fishing with the Devil, Terrace VII: Wall of Fire, and Terrace VI: Forbidden Fruit. When not writing, editing, publishing and running unfathomable long ultramarathons, he spends his time pestering his troublesome children, and working as a software architect for a small economic forecasting software company.

The Art of Micro-Fiction

Tuesday March 21 2023 7-9 pm MT Sign Up

Instructor: paulo da costa

From one sentence-long to 1000 words stories, join paulo in learning the necessary skills to hone your writing craft in order to deliver a compact and compelling narrative. Learn to effectively distill a story down to its most impacting emotional moment. Successful micro-fictions leave a lasting impression on a reader’s mind.

paulo has been writing sudden fiction since the 90’s and has published over 100 sudden fictions in his writing career. His micro fictions have won competitions, have been anthologized internationally, translated to other languages and recorded in audiobooks. His latest work, The Midwife of Torment and Other Stories is a collection of 60 sudden fictions.  

This workshop will take place IN PERSON at the Alexandra Writers’ Centre in Calgary.

paulo da costa is a writer, editor and translator living in Canada. He is the recipient of the 2020 James H. Gray Award for Short Nonfiction, the 2003 Commonwealth First Book Prize for the Canada-Caribbean Region, the W. O. Mitchell City of Calgary Book Prize and the Canongate Prize for short-fiction. His poetry, fiction and non-fiction have been published widely in literary magazines around the world and translated into Italian, Spanish, Serbian, Slovenian and Portuguese.

Learning to Shave, Learning to Leave, a book of creative non-fiction, is forthcoming with University of Regina Press. https://www.paulodacosta.ca/

Writing mentorship with paulo da costa at AWC

https://www.alexandrawriters.org/author-development-program.html

Check out the details on how to work on your manuscript with me at the Alexandra Writers Centre during the 2023 ADP season. In person or remotely (anywhere in the country).

Program Time Frame/Length:
January 2023 – June 2023 (6 months)

The program ends with a reading and celebration. This may be done online and will depend on the location of all participants.

Program Fee:
$100 non-refundable application fee (application fee will be deducted from program fee upon successful application.)
$2700/participant (subsidies and flexible payment options available) please ask AWC

Fee includes: One year AWCS membership, one-on-one story coaching, private workshops designed just for Story Makers, and FOUR regularly scheduled workshops/or a class ($300 value) of your choosing throughout the term. 

Poetry, Long and Short Fiction (all genres) Creative Nonfiction ONLINE OR IN PERSON ?(Calgary and area)

paulo da costa is a writer, editor and translator living in Mohkintsis/Calgary. He is the recipient of the 2020 James H. Gray Award for Short Nonfiction, the 2003 Commonwealth First Book Prize for the Canada-Caribbean Region, the W. O. Mitchell City of Calgary Book Prize and the Canongate Prize for short-fiction. His poetry, fiction and non-fiction have been published widely in literary magazines around the world and translated into Italian, Spanish, Serbian, Slovenian and Portuguese. The Midwife of Torment is his latest book of fiction.