The Federation of British Columbia Writers presents "Connection to Place" - a multi-genre writing retreat led by poet/novelist and well-known writing teacher at North Island College, Derek Hanebury. April 17-19 at Nanaimo's Bethlehem Retreat Centre.
“Connection to Place” goes beyond mere setting and looks to the deeper interplay between a writer and his or her sense of belonging to somewhere, or perhaps nowhere, and between the writer and the physical and cultural environment that the story or poem is rooted in. So when Hanebury writes about Vancouver Island, where he lives now, he invites the reader into the physicality of the place:
To feel the weight
of rain, not just the low
shove of banked cumulus,
but compressed rain
that pits the garden…
In the end, place, and our relationship to it, infuse almost everything we write, and as the playwright Michelle Tremblay said, if we get the details of a specific location right, the story speaks not just to that place but to the global place. And if we really get it right, it speaks to the universal place.
The workshop is open to nine resident writers who will stay at the Bethlehem Retreat Centre.
The cost: $325 Federation of British Columbia Writers members/$380 non-members is all-inclusive - room, meals, taxes, workshop and one-on-one sessions with Derek Hanebury April 17-April 19.
For details and registration information, visit:
http://bcwriters.ca/fbcw-spring-retreat/