Writers from across genres will talk about moments in their manuscripts when their writing faltered, fizzled, and then…stopped. What made that chapter or poem difficult to write? What thinking, learning, imagining, or reimagining was needed to move forward? Join us for a conversation about banging your head against a metaphorical wall, hard-won writing victories, and all the strange and beautiful things we learn along the way.
Hybrid events are held in person, you will also be able to watch it live streamed from our Youtube channel.
Location: Room C460, UBC Robson Square
Type: Panel
Sponsored by The Writers Studio, Simon Fraser University
Moderator: JJ Lee
Panelists: Emi Sasagawa, Atomweight (Tidewater Press) | C.A. Tanaka, Baby Drag Queen (Orca Book Publishers) | Emelia Symington-Fedy, Skid Dogs (Douglas & McIntyre) | Sareh Farmand, Pistachios in My Pocket (At Bay Press)
About The Moderator
JJ Lee wrote the memoir THE MEASURE OF A MAN: THE STORY OF A FATHER, A SON, AND A SUIT. He teaches creative nonfiction at The Writer's Studio, Simon Fraser University. His essays and features have appeared in ELLE Canada, ELLE Man, Flare, Fashion, Montecristo, and Nuvo magazines. He lives in New Westminster.
About The Readers
Candie Tanaka is a multiracial trans writer, artist and librarian challenging the binaries continually reconstructed between self and other while exploring archive and memory in a socio-political context. They are a creative writing graduate of The Writer’s Studio program at Simon Fraser University and have a BFA in Intermedia from Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design. Their first YA book, Baby Drag Queen was published with Orca Books in April 2023. They’ve also have work in Resonance: Essays on the Craft of Life and Writing with Anvil Press and This Will Only Take A Minute: Canadian Flash Fiction with Guernica Editions.
EMELIA SYMINGTON-FEDY is a theatre creator, broadcaster and author. She is the founding co- artistic director of The Chop, and has toured their works to global acclaim. A writer and co-writer on over twenty-five new Canadian theatre productions, Emelia has also been a contributing essayist to CBC radio for twenty years, telling personal stories- about motherhood, addiction, grief, and other forbidden topics- in public. Emelia has been a guest lecturer at UBC and Simon Fraser University and is a graduate of Studio 58, The SFU Writer’s Studio, and SFU’s Creative Writing Graduate Program. She leads retreats and workshops on creativity. Emelia lives in the woods with her partner and kids. 'Skid Dogs’ is her first book.
Her debut novel Atomweight, by Tidewater Press, tells the story of Aki, a good girl, good student, good daughter from a loving but demanding multiracial family, who, after being triggered by a violent incident, begins picking fights with random strangers. This is a story about mixedness, queerness and power—about reflecting on oppression and privilege, and the ways we take up space in the world. Her short story “Half-Word” was featured in Room magazine’s issue on neurodivergence, and her nonfiction essay “Between Word and Mouth,” exploring death and grief, was published by Ricepaper Magazine, and included in Belief, an anthology with stories by writers of Asian descent. She is a former fellow of the News21 Fellowship, by Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism, and the International Reporting Program Fellowship by the Global Reporting Centre. She’s received the Edward R. Murrow Award, the Rafe Mair Award for Excellence in Journalism and the Canadian Online Publishing Award. Her journalistic writing has been published in local, national and international newspapers, from small publications like The Tyee to large and far-reaching media organizations like The Washington Post. Emi is a graduate of TWS at Simon Fraser University, and is currently completing an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia.
Sareh Farmand was born in Tehran, Iran at the start of the Islamic Revolution, and grew up in Vancouver, BC. Her first book of poems, Pistachios in my Pocket (published by At Bay Press, Fall 2022), follows a narrative arc that tells the story of her family’s escape from Iran and their experiences as first wave Iranian immigrants to Canada. She holds degrees in International Relations and Education from UBC and is a 2018 graduate of SFU’s The Writing Studio. When she is not writing poetry, she can be found screenwriting, consulting, cultivating other creative pursuits, and exploring mountains and coastlines with her family and friends. You can find her musings on Instagram (@thewritersway) and Facebook (@thewritersway). Sareh acknowledges that the land on which she writes and lives is the unceded territory of the Coast Salish Peoples, including the territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
