So far we've read...

excerpts from:
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamont
Push by Sapphire
Skids by Cathleen With
Missing Sarah: A Memoir of Loss by Maggie de Vries
The Carnegie Newsletter

poems:
"What We Know About Babies" by Patricia Young
"The Song My Paddle Sings" by Pauline Johnson
"Maybe I Won't Come This Way Again" by Sandy Cameron
"Hochelaga" by Maxine Gadd
"Autobiography" by Margaret Atwood
"After School Special" by Rachel McKibbens (well, really we watched the youtube video)

Guest Speakers

So far we have had 2 very lovely guest speakers. The first being Rose Georgeson, director of the Downtown Eastside Women's Writing Workshop and aboriginal community director at UrbanInk here on the Downtown Eastside. We did a wonderful writing exercise with Rose, where we wrote about Gatherings.
The second guest speaker was Maggie de Vries, children's book and memoir author. She spoke to us about the process of publishing children's literature and her experience writing Missing Sarah: A Memoir of Loss about her sister Sarah de Vries who went missing from the Downtown Eastside almost a decade ago. Her advice: 500 words before breakfast.
Sadly our third scheduled speaker, Cathleen With, recent recipient of the Ethel Wilson fiction prize for her novel, Having Faith in the Polar Girls' Prison, and author of the short story collection, Skids, was not able to make it. We're working on fixing that.