Banff Centre launches new residency on literary diversity
The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity has announced its slate of fall programming, with a new residency on literary diversity called Centering Ourselves: Writing in a Racialized Canada.
The program features faculty members Katherena Vermette, author of The Break, David Chariandy, author of Soucouyant, Sonnet L'Abbé, the editor of Best Canadian Poetry 2014 and author of the collection Killarnoe, and Liz Howard, who won the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize for her debut poetry collection Infinite Citizen of the Shaking Tent. Poet Phinder Dulai will helm the residency as lead faculty.
- Liz Howard on the indelible mark of northern Ontario
- Katherena Vermette on why quiet stories speak the loudest
"Increasingly, today's writer is participating in acts of acknowledgement, reclamation, restoration and resurgence regarding minority, diasporic and Indigenous histories," the Banff Centre writes on its website about the program.
"This year, 2017, provides an opportunity to take pause, pivot and create space to think about these histories, and to write those necessary stories, poems, essays and novels that speak from an interracial, interethnic and inter-sectional point of view."
There are 20 spots available for the two-week intensive, which takes place in September. Interested applicants must apply by July 12.
An investigative journalism intensive course is being introduced in October, with New York Times managing editor Patti Sonntag, Toronto Star reporter Robert Cribb and journalism professor Peter W. Klein. The five-day course will teach research techniques in the turbulent age of alternative facts and fake news.
Rachel Cusk, author of the novel Outline, joins the faculty of the Emerging Writers Intensive along with Elizabeth Philips, Jennifer Haigh and Douglas Glover. The program is open to eight new writers working on their first chapter novel, creative nonfiction, poetry or short fiction.
The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity is also bringing back the Mountain and Wilderness Survival Writing program, which began in 2005. Marni Jackson, journalist and author of Don't I Know You?, will serve as faculty editor this fall.
The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity is one of the partners of the CBC Literary Prizes.