Stamford Branch
3643 Portage Rd
Open Readers Workshop
11:30am - 1:00pm
featuring
FJ Doucet
Nancy Taber
Karen Gansel
Sharon Frayne
This workshop will feature various authors reading from their new, old and/or in progress works within a group open to comment and conversation. Others are encouraged to join the conversation and to share their own work within the group. Registration is not required but is recommended.
F. J. Doucett
Open Readers Workshop
11.30 a.m. –1.00 p.m.
FJ Doucet was born in Niagara Falls, Ontario, and has since lived in Europe, the Middle East, and in far northern Canada. Her poetry has been published in a number of online and print sources, including Grey Borders magazine, Hamilton Arts and Letters, Ascent Aspirations Publications, and The Lyric, as well as The Banister anthology. She is a member of the Ontario Poetry Society and The Wild Nellies women's creative collective in Durham Region.
Nancy Taber
Open Readers Workshop
11.30 a.m. –1.00 p.m.
Dr. Nancy Taber is a Professor at Brock University. She is a retired Canadian military member who served as a Sea King helicopter air navigator. She has published her academic research, which explores the intersection of war, gender, and learning, in multiple books, book chapters, journal articles, and conference proceedings. Nancy is working on a collection of short stories that immerse the reader in diverse tales about strong and complicated women who have been touched by war: a gift shop worker in the Imperial War Museum who timeslips with the building in which the museum is housed, returning to when it was the Bethlam (Bedlam) hospital in the 1800s; a journalist who plans a heist to steal her grandmother’s journal from the Bletchley Park code-breaking museum; and, a nursing sister who survived her service at Ypres in World War I only to have the dead follow her home to Canada, resulting in her visit to the future site of the In Flanders Fields museum in an effort to put them to rest. A forthcoming book chapter about fiction as research dissemination has excerpts from three stories in this collection. Nancy is also working on a historical fiction novel about Acadian women affected by the military in three time periods: the present, 1864, and 1759. Each of these projects examines themes of war, family, belonging, and the ways in which the past interacts with the present. Nancy is a professional member of the Canadian Authors Association.
Sharon Frayne
Open Readers Workshop
11.30 a.m. –1.00 p.m.
Sharon Frayne holds a double Honours B.A. in Visual Art and English, a Bachelor of Education with specialists in English and Visual Art and a Master of Education in Curriculum Writing. She taught high school Art and English and was an Administrator with the Halton District School Board. She is an author and an artist.
In 2019, her short stories and poems were winners in the Eden Mills Writers Festival, the South Simcoe Arts Festival, the Northern Ontario Writer’s Workshop, and in the Banister Poetry Contest. She’s successfully competed in the Muskoka Novel Marathon. She’s a frequent winner of the NOTL Rising Spirits Writing competition. She’s regularly published in local papers and online with Commuterlit. Her personal essay, ‘Stepping into a Lifetime’ was the USA national winner in the Stage of Life competition.
She’s a member of the NOTL Writer’s Circle, and the Niagara branch of the Canadian Author’s Association. She’s the past Editor of the CAA annual Anthology and has appeared as a guest speaker at numerous festivals. She was once featured in a televised production of ‘A Christmas Carol’ with the CBC.
Her debut novel, set in the once mighty Niagara Courthouse and Jail is the historical fiction book, ‘Caught Between the Walls’. When she’s not capturing ideas in print, she captures images in paint. She lives in Niagara with her husband and faithful yellow lab.
For more information, go to http://www.fraynesharon.com
Karen Gansel
Open Readers Workshop
11.30 a.m. –1.00 p.m.
Karen Gansel is a long-time member of the Canadian Authors Association in Niagara. She was President for many years and lead the branch through many challenges and transitions. She chaired the board CAA Branch Support and Development Committee and the Program Committee. Currently, she is one of two Regional Directors for Ontario for the Canadian Authors Association. Karen’s first novel, Differences Between Us, is a psychological suspense that is available on Amazon.com and Kobo.com. A short story, Canal of Destiny, was published on the Quick Brown Fox blog in 2010. She is in the process of submitting her second and third novels to agents and editors.
MA|DE
(Jade Wallace and Mark Laliberte)
How To Write Collaboratively
1.30 p.m. – 3.00 p.m.
MA|DE is a collective gesture, a unity of two voices fused into a poetic third. It is the name given to the joint authorship of Toronto-based creators Mark Laliberte and Jade Wallace, artists whose active solo practices differ quite radically from one another. MA|DE’s collaborative writing formalizes a process that began as an extended conversation between two people newly discovering one another. Over a number of months, the pair messaged, texted, emailed, telephoned, conversed in person, left links on social media for the other to find, and mailed letters; their long, exploratory conversations opened up a language-space all their own …
MA|DE is currently working on their first full-length collection of collaborative poetry.