Writers Retreat & Conference

Participants will immerse themselves in the craft of writing, connect with other writers, and hear from authors through readings and workshops.

Join novelist and playwright, Fran Kimmel, as she welcomes participants. 

Author Katherine Koller will give you The Short Story on Short Stories: In this workshop, we will all begin plans for a new short story, or develop plans for an existing one. Short stories have a drive, a need, and heat that ends in change. We will listen for the call of the story, follow the heat, and chase the drive with time to test out mini-techniques on structure, character and dialogue. 

Delve into Writing with the Five Senses with Author Rayanne Haines: We experience the world around us through our senses, and they are how we navigate place, identify danger, seek stimulation, and form the memories through which our identities take shape. Translating rich sensory details onto the page enables writers to inhabit their characters and stories in ways that offer three dimensional, truthful experiences for the readers. And isn’t that what we strive for as authors in non-fiction and fiction? To make our worlds come to life? In this workshop we explore writing taste, sight, smell, touch and sound to create descriptions that will stay with your reader and improve your writing skills

Time will be set aside after each workshop for self-guided writing. Participants can stretch their legs and explore the facility and yard to find their perfect place to write. Writing prompts will be available to anyone needing inspiration.

Participants will be guided through a brief sound meditation, cleansing their palettes before breaking for lunch (provided).

The day will end with an opportunity to share some work and last thoughts.

Full schedule (times may be adjusted slightly, finalized timelines will be sent out prior to the retreat)

Friday, June 13 
6:00 PM Mix and Mingle with food & beverages
7:00 PM Author Readings: Lee Kvern & Blaine Newton (open to the public)

Saturday, June 14
8:30am Doors open, coffee & muffins
8:45am Welcome by Fran Kimmel
9:00am Workshop 1 followed by self-guided writing 
11:30am Sound Meditation
12:15pm Lunch
1:00pm Workshop 2 followed by self-guided writing time 
3:30pm Sharing time and Last thoughts

Price includes lunch. We are unable to accommodate allergies.
Limited spots available.
Ages 16 & Up
Sessions taking place in our SHUNDA Theatre have limited accessibility.

Author Readings:

Lee Kvern is an award-winning author of short stories and novels. Her stories in 7 Ways To Sunday have won the CBC Literary Award, Western Magazine Award, Hazel Hilles Memorial Short Fiction Prize, and the Howard ‘O’ Hagan Award.  Afterall was selected for Canada Reads (Regional) and nominated for Alberta Books Awards. The Matter of Sylvie was nominated for Alberta Book Awards and the Ottawa Relit Award and Alberta Magazine Awards. Her work has been produced for CBC Radio,  and published in Funicular, Grain, Event, Descant, Air Canada enRoute, Tishman Review, Globe&Mail, and subTerrain.

Blaine Newton is an award-winning playwright, comedy and short fiction writer, actor and sometime engineer. His plays have been produced across western Canada, and his short fiction has been published in magazines and anthologies, and featured on CBC and CKUA radio. He lives in Edmonton with his wife, Leslie Greentree. Rag Pickers is his first short story collection.

Facilitators:

Fran Kimmel has worked an eclectic mix of jobs including youth worker, career counsellor, proposal writer, and a ten-year stint as VP for a career consulting firm. Her short stories have appeared in literary journals from coast to coast, and her plays have been produced for both theatre and radio. Fran has published two novels. The Shore Girl landed on the CBC Top 40-Book List and won the Alberta Reader’s Choice Award. No Good Asking, shortlisted for the 2019 Georges Bugnet and ReLit Awards, has been translated for international markets. Fran’s third novel will hit bookshelves in the spring of 2025.

Katherine Koller writes for stage, screen, and page. Stage plays include Coal Valley, The Seed Savers, Last Chance Leduc, and Riverkeeper. Books are Voices of the Land, plays; Art Lessons, a novel; and Winning Chance, short stories, winner of a High Plains Book Award. Short fiction has appeared in Grain, Room, Epiphany, Alberta Views, LitSphere, EDify, The Fiddlehead, and Through the Portal. Her web series is Sustainable Me and recent audio plays are Hope Soup and The Percussionist. Katherine is a founding producer of Edmonton Script Salon, a monthly new play reading series in its tenth year, and a returning member of the Citadel Playwrights Lab working on an adaptation of a novel by Jane Austen. 

Rayanne Haines is an award-winning hybrid author and pushcart nominated poet, producer and podcaster. She is the author of Tell The Birds Your Body Is Not A Gun (Frontenac House), winner of the 2022 Stephan G. Stephansson, Alberta Literary Award for Poetry and shortlisted for both the BPAA Robert Kroetsch Award, and the ReLit Award. She's also the author of the poetry collections The Stories in My Skin (2013), Stained with the Colours of Sunday Morning (Inanna, 2017), and now, What Kind of Daughter? (Frontenac House, 2024) a poetry and essay memoir exploring grief, identity, and gendered trauma. Rayanne served as the 2022 Writer in Residence for the Edmonton Region Federation of Libraries, is the recipient of an Edmonton Artist Trust Fund Award, host of the Crow Reads Podcast, President of the League of Canadian Poets, and an Assistant Professor at MacEwan University. She has been published in various anthologies and journals including the Globe and Mail, Minola Review, Fiddlehead, Grain, FreeFall, Prairie Fire and others.