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Afterwords Literary Festival: Workshop with Randy Boyagoda
October 3, 2020 @ 2:30 pm - 4:00 pm
$15Events Navigation
A truth universally acknowledged: The first page matters with Randy Boyagoda
The AfterWords Literary Festival was co-founded by Ryan Turner and Stephanie Domet, and in the fall of 2019, AfterWords held its inaugural edition. In 2020, due to Covid-19, the festival will host live events online between September 30th and October 4th. AfterWords is primarily interested in presenting (and being in the audience for) conversations among writers about the ideas that push them forward, the experiences that formed them into writers, and what writing can tell us about how to be human. Our mission is to give those writers who choose to join us the very best experience that Halifax has to offer.
We will offer live captioning upon request to all of our online events.
We celebrate our festival on the unceded and traditional homeland of the Mi’kmaq People. We do land acknowledgements as a part of the reconciliation process. In order for this festival to exist, for Canadians to enjoy the lives that they have, Indigenous people were removed, displaced, and killed. This truth is an uncomfortable one, but one that is necessary to face if we, as fellow Canadians, are to understand our whole history. We honour the Mi’kmaq, whose stories have been shaped by Mi’kma’ki.
Great stories begin with great openings. In this workshop, you will explore the promise and peril of how to begin a work of fiction. Any one decision – of perspective, voice, location, time sequence – has a series of cascading effects on what you decide to do next. Done well, the first page invites readers into the rest of the story with balancing ratios of curiosity and committing. Looking at a series of examples — from the likes of Herman Melville, Elena Ferrante, Ian Williams, and Arundhati Roy — we will discuss your writing ambitions and plans in the context of what makes for the best possible start to the stories you want to tell.
Fee of $15.00.
2:30-4:00 pm AST on Saturday, October 3rd.
Registration opens August 10th. Limit of 12 participants.