School visits, author residencies, and writing workshops

Hard to believe the new school year is already here!

I had a very busy—and fun—2021-2022 season as an author, visiting schools, libraries, and learning institutes in Canada, USA, and Korea. Many were done virtually, but I also was thankful to see a return to in-person workshops (especially in Korea!). Many of my workshops were built off the release of my latest middle-grade book, Spell Sweeper—which meant a focus on magic potions, mysterious monsters, enchanted pets, and spell-binding shopping trips!

If I had an official resume, it would read like this for 2021-2022 . . .

• World Read Aloud Day (virtual readings for schools across the US and Canada)
• Canadian Children’s Book Week Tour (virtual workshops for schools in Alberta and Ontario)
• Several in-person workshops for libraries and learning institutes in Korea
• Several virtual author presentations for schools and libraries in Canada, in which I rolled out my trademark interactive brainstorming sessions

Writer/Artist-in-residencies for:

• Vancouver School Board gifted learning program
• Star of the Sea School, Grade 5
• Kamloops School of the Arts (grades 8-12)
• Hume Home Learning school (K-8)

I delivered activities for The Imagine in the Park festival in Hamilton, Ontario, and I even led events for adults, delivering presentations for CANSCAIP, The Writers’ Union of Canada, and WriteOnCon.

What magic will this school year hold? I’m prepping for my scheduled creative writing classes, writer-in-residencies, and school visits now, but you can still book me for an in-person or virtual author visit! Just visit my website.

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Welcome to Enchanted Earth!

At the end of June, I finished up a year-long project at an arts-based high school in Kamloops (about four hours outside of my home city of Vancouver). Over the many months, I delivered a series of world-building activities, all via Zoom, first because of the pandemic and then because the roads were cut off after our extreme flooding (and then because of covid again). 

I do a lot of teaching and speaking over digital technologies, but it’s always a bit more challenging when art is involved because I simply don’t get a chance to lean over shoulders and see what everyone’s working on in the moment. Sure, people can send me photos and files, but it’s never quite the same, mostly because I find it harder to connect with the students.

Luckily, I was finally able to make the trip to Kamloops in the last week of June to deliver a keynote speech to the entire school body and to view their amazing gallery of work. The biggest surprise? The students were so engaged, asking me so many questions, and showing some genuine interest—these were things that I just didn’t pick up on during our virtual sessions. So, there was a connection, and that made the experience extremely rewarding.

As for the specifics of the project, the students were divided into teams to create five different realms: Ice, Sky, Underground, Land, and Water. The worldbuilding was applied to every course in the curriculum—not only the obvious ones such as art and writing, but also science and math. 

The result was really amazing. As I wandered the gallery of their Enchanted Earth, I found sculpture, myths, recipes, maps, constellations, language systems, field guide entries for creatures, dioramas . . . pretty much every corner of these worlds was imagined and explored. 

I’m showing pictures of just a fraction of the amazing pieces.

I want to extend my thank you to all the students and staff at Kamloops School of the Arts (secondary pod), in particular my partner Melanie Gilmar, who spearheaded the entire initiative. A big thank you to ArtStarts, the funding body for the project.