Due to health and safety concerns around COVID-19, Word Up is hosting events online until further notice. Please enjoy these previous Zoom events. Check our Upcoming Events page for live, online readings and Open Mics and sign up for our newsletter to receive official event invites.
Characters with Disabilities in Fiction If we want our stories to be well-rounded, it’s important to include disability along with other types of diverse characters. Since some of our greatest real life heroes are not able-bodied, like Rick Hanson and Terry Fox, we can aim to develop thoughtful stories that…
LGBTQ In Writing
We humans categorize each other as a way to describe and assign differences, including differences of race, ethnicity, social class, disability, gender, and sexual orientation. With regard to LGBTQ, we’ll discuss these categories respectfully in terms of who our writers are and how to create well developed characters to avoid perpetuating stereotypes? Join us for an enlightening panel and come with your questions.
Pacing and Writing Action Scenes Panel
Pacing affects the mood of your story, helps develop ideas and themes, and allows your readers to connect to the characters and the events that surround them. How does a writer determine the speed the story needs, or how quickly to distribute the information needed to move your story along? Join our panelists with your questions to gain their insights and methodologies.
March 11th | How to Build Suspense Building the right amount of tension in your novel or short story can be tricky. Do you show the conflict on the opening line? When do you throw in your red herrings and how many is too many? Join our experienced, award winning…
Creating a Romantic Element: Keeping the Sexual Tension Heated
Writing romance not your thing, but you have to write a scene for your story or book? Join three experienced romance writers for tips on how to make your writing more steamy.
Ready to give 2020 a hard kick? Start the New Year off with a solid plan to write that book or develop your writing skills. Word Up is changing things up this year. Join us on Zoom for a Panel with three skilled writing instructors and mentors who offer methods to stay motivated and techniques for better writing.
Enjoy the work of writer and publisher MichaelMirolla and poet Cornelia Hoogland as they share their work.
Cornelia Hoogland is the award winning poet of Trailer Park Elegy and Woods Wolf Girl. Cosmic Bowling is a collaborative work of Ted Goodden’s ceramic sculptures and Cornelia Hoogland’s poems.
Mirolla is a multi award winning author and serves as editor-in-chief of Guernica Editions. His latest novella, The Last News Vendor, claimed first place in the Readers View Awards.
Join us as we enjoy the writng of Candas Jane Dorsey and Ursula Pflug.
Candas Jane Dorsey is the internationally-known and multi-award-winning author of novels Black Wine and Paradigm of Earth; upcoming mystery series The Adventures of Isabel.
Ursula Pflug is author or editor of ten novels, novellas, edited anthologies and story collections. Her fiction has appeared in Canada, the US and the UK, in award winning genre and literary publications including Lightspeed, Fantasy, Strange Horizons, Postscripts, Leviathan, and Bamboo Ridge.
Enjoy thriller authors Amy Stuart and Sam Bailey as they share their work and writing advice. Amy Stuart is the #1 bestselling author of three novels, Still Mine, Still Water, and Still Here. Shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis Best First Novel Award and winner of the 2011 Writers’ Union of Canada Short Fiction Competition, Samantha M. Bailey is the #1 bestselling author of Woman on the Edge. A Toronto-based novelist, journalist and freelance editor, her work has appeared in Now Magazine, The Village Post, and Oxford University Press, among other publications.
Authors Rosanna Battogelli and Ray Robertson join us to read their original work. Rosanna’s novel La Brigantessa (Inanna Publications, 2018) won Gold for Historical Fiction in the 2019 Independent Publisher Book (IPPY) Awards while Robertson’s poetry has been translated to several languages.
