My Week at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Part 2

Last week, I posted about the first half of my week at the Banff Centre for the Arts. Since no one could ever possibly get tired of my literary vacation photos, enjoy another full page of writing exercises, bad bar selfies, and pictures of mountains!

Like this one.

0

My Week at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Part 1

As I've mentioned a few times before on this blog, last spring I won my first writing award. The prize was a full scholarship to the September Writing with Style workshop at the Banff Centre for the Arts. Those of you who know how to work a calendar may have noticed that we're already halfway through September, and, sadly, my time at the Banff Centre is already at an end.

Since I wasn't allowed to stuff all you into my suitcase and drag you onto the Greyhound to Banff with me, I will be detailing my literary-tastic week here, in painstaking detail. Starting with:

Saturday

Those of you who find me fascinating enough to check up on each and every week will know that I spent most of the first Saturday sitting on a Greyhound bus. If you were to hop in a car and drive directly from my street to the front doors of the Banff Centre, it'd be almost exactly a four-hour journey, but thanks to Greyhound's unceasing dedication to late departures and random detours down rural cowpaths, the journey by bus takes a total of eight hours. Using the Edmonton Greyhound station means you even get to take a field trip into the most economically and socially bankrupt cesspit of Edmonton, where you can spend the hour before your departure trying to figure out which patrons of the station A&W are travelers, and which ones are prostitutes taking Uncle Burger breaks. (HINT: none of those people are travelers. Hope you wiped that seat off with bleach.)

Chariot of champions.

So after spending the better part of my day clutching my messenger bag to my chest and praying that whoever sat next to me would have minimal facial sores, the bus finally turned up into the mountains and dropped me off in Banff, before continuing on its way to Vancouver. This was it. I was on my own, with three pieces of luggage, half a novel manuscript, and absolutely no idea where to go.

0

Technical Difficulties

I've been meaning to post about my experiences at the Banff Centre for Writers, but I'm having some computer and camera issues. Check back next week!

Rest assured, I've got a team of experts on the case.

0

On the Road to Banff

Today's the big day.

Some time ago, I wrote about winning the Darren Zenko Memorial Prize in Creative Writing. For those of you who are allergic to hot links, the award is given out each year at my university to the most outstanding student in a creative writing class, as determined by a jury of writing professors who were clearly drunk that day.

Booze is the only thing that drowns out the stupid questions of undergraduate students.

I've been counting down the days until the Writing with Style Workshop to begin, and my basic ability to keep track of days of the year has finally paid off - it starts tonight! I will be spending the next week workshopping the first chapter of my newest novel with Alison Pick, an award-winning Canadian author whose books you should be reading, like, right now.

0