Due to low engagement, this event has been cancelled.
If you have feedback on programming, please message elyssia@imarts.com
In-Person Learning Event (COVID-Contingent)

In order to participate in the workshop, we will require all participants to be masked and have proof of vaccination.

"SPACE, THE FINAL FRONTIER . . ." AND "A LONG, LONG TIME AGO IN A GALAXY FAR FAR AWAY . . ." BEGIN EPIC STORIES.

Have you ever wanted to explore the future, wonder what it would be like to encounter alien life forms, struggle through a supervolcano event? Taste the water on a new world? Help others struggle to survive through a catastrophe? Wouldn't you love to share such thoughts with others? An Introduction to Writing Science Fiction invites you to think and write alongside others with the same interest.

The future is yours if you own it.

This is a workshop for those interested in exploring Aboriginal science fiction through poetry or stories. Participants at different levels of writing experience are led through a structured series of topical discussions and exercises to develop their own stories or poems on a science fiction topic of their own choosing. Throughout the workshop, participants are encouraged to explore their own writing voices.

IMPORTANT DATES

Friday September 17th - Meet + Greet (Time TBD)

Saturday September 18th - Day - Writing Exercises

Sunday September 19th - Writing Exercises + Invited reading

$150 for workshop

Accommodations available at The Nest ($50 - $65 per night depending on the configuration) Please contact elyssia@imarts.com for more information

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR

Gerry William, in this image from Silmara Emde, is holding a book and wearing a black zip-up hoodie in front of the desert hills of the Okanagan Region in B.C.

Gerry William is a published writer of Aboriginal science fiction and historical fiction. He takes readers through stories spanning space and time, through what it may have been like when Aboriginal people met the first European settlers two hundred years ago. He incorporates Aboriginal themes in all of his stories, such as Aboriginal world views, the importance of Aboriginal languages, the power of elders, being taken from one's own culture.

Gerry is of Shuswap-Okanagan ancestry (Secwepemc and syilx). He has done many things in his life. A Native Courtworker, a curriculum developer, a teacher, an administrator. All of it focused on Aboriginal peoples..

Gerry likes to challenge himself and others to explore what it means to be alive in today's world, what it meant to see the first horse arrive, what wonders and horrors will be met tomorrow, what being an alien life form might really be like. And how this would all look through an Aboriginal lens.

It's important to think like others, to feel what they feel, to know what they know, to understand what they understand, to be different from yourself. Stories and poems do that. They invite the reader, the listener, to leave your own cares, your own troubles. It invites you to stretch your imagination, to feel through storytelling and poetry that others live, breathe, play and work. And in an Aboriginal sense the importance not just of yourself, but of your family, your community, the world. Shared responsibility. Caretakers of the spirits of this world. Learning through a lifetime.

But most of all, writing a good story, a good poem. To invite yourself, invite the reader, to look at everything differently. The way everyone sees the world is important. Not just how you see the world. We all are storytellers. We sit with our brother, our sister, our aunt, our husband, our son, our friend, our neighbour and over a meal tell the story of meeting someone new, of meeting someone you know, of the lunch you had with friends. Of something you did differently or learned today. These stories go back countless generations, and all stories are meant to be shared. Your stories, every one of them, strengthen the family and community you live in. You invite others to laugh, cry, trust, love. And in today's world, this is important stuff. To invite trust of others to journey with you as you build another strand in the web that is you, your community, the world.