North Shore Writers Festival: Creative Writing 101 from Capilano University faculty

Come to writing class with us! Explore an array of styles, genres and writing prompts given by creative writing faculty from CapU.

Creative writing instructors from CapU’s BA program in Writing and Literature will provide short prompts and writing exercises to get your creativity and writing process going, and students from the creative writing program will share some of their work in response to the prompts. Bring paper and pen and be ready to write and challenge your creative skills.

CapU Faculty: Adèle Barclay, Leah Bailly, Holly Flauto and Fenn Stewart.

This workshop is presented by the North Shore Writers' Association.

FREE! Registration is required to secure your spot. Drop-in seating may be available but is not guaranteed.

Interested in attending more than one Festival event? You must register for each event separately to guarantee your spot at each event. 

For more information on this and other festival events, visit www.northshorewritersfestival.com 

Register

About the presenters

Adèle Barclay (she/they) is a writer of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. She is the recipient of the 2016 Lit POP Award, The Walrus’ 2016 Readers’ Choice Award for Poetry, The Fiddlehead’s 2022 Fiction Prize and a 2025 Gold National Magazine Award for Best Column & Essay. Their debut poetry collection, If I Were in a Cage I'd Reach Out for You, (Nightwood, 2016) was nominated for the 2015 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry and won the 2017 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Her second collection of poetry, Renaissance Normcore (Nightwood, 2019), featured in Toronto Star and CBC Books, was nominated for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the ReLit Award and placed third for the 2020 Fred Cogswell Award.

Leah Bailly is a playwright, fiction writer and journalist whose writing has appeared in publications such as Versal, PANK, Prism, Room, subTerrain, Hobart, on CBC Radio, NPR and in an anthology of Las Vegas fiction Restless City. In 2013 Leah won the Graywolf Prize for best novel excerpt from an emerging writer. In 2010, she traveled to Sierra Leone, where she conducted interviews and research for her first novel, The Following. In the summer of 2010, she was awarded her first Canada Council grant for development of this manuscript.

Holly Flauto (she/they) is a poet, story-teller, learner, and instructor living and writing on the traditional, ancestral and stolen territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and Selilwitulh Nations. Holly's debut poetry-memoir collection exploring immigration to Canada as a modern-day settler, Permission to Settle (Anvil Press), was named one of the top poetry books of 2024 by CBC books.

Fenn Stewart is the author of three chapbooks and the poetry collection, Better Nature, which was long listed for the 2018 Gerald Lampert Memorial Prize. A former editor of The Capilano Review, she continues to serve on the magazine’s editorial board. Stewart holds a PhD in social and political thought, and teaches literature and writing at Capilano University.

About the Festival

The North Shore Writers Festival (NSWF) is presented in partnership by North Vancouver City Library, North Vancouver District Public Library, and West Vancouver Memorial Library. The NSWF would not be made possible without support from the Friends of the Library groups at NVDPL and WVML, North Shore Writers’ Association, Kidsbooks, and the North Shore News.

The Festival takes place on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) , and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations. The Coast Salish Peoples have long used oral storytelling to pass on and preserve their cultural teachings. This powerful tradition highlights the important role that stories play in our lives. We are grateful to host the North Shore Writers Festival on the lands of these Nations and honour the art of storytelling.