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featuring the Humber School for Writers

Hosts:

Kim Moritsugu is the author of five novels, her most recent being a mystery novelette called And Everything Nice. She also leads a walking tour for Heritage Toronto, teaches creative writing at The Humber School for Writers, and writes The Hungry Novelist food blog.
 

Antanas Sileika is the Director of the Humber School for Writers. He is a freelance writer and novelist. His most recent novel, Underground, was chosen as one of the Globe and Mail’s top 100 books for 2011.
 

Click on a segment below to learn more.

• 11:00 - 11:45 AM :: How Not To Get Published

  Thinking of dropping your manuscript into the backpack of an editor as she waits for her morning coffee at Starbucks? Slipping it under her door at night?

  Does your failsafe approach include typing in capitals only or sending hard copy with writing on both sides of the page? Learn what turns off publishers and acquisitions editors and the first two words in a cover letter that made one editor reject an entire manuscript.

  Mike O’Connor is the founder and publisher of London-based publishing house, Insomniac Press. He has been the president of the Organization of Book Publishers of Ontario. He has sat on the boards of directors for many industry organizations, including Access Copyright and the Canadian Copyright Institute.

  Janice Zawerbny is editorial director at Thomas Allen and Son and has been in the publishing industry since 1998, also working at Somerville House and Key Porter Books. Some acquisitions for Thomas Allen include Antanas Sileika’s novel, Underground, and Marq de Villiers’ Defending Canada in the Far North.

• 12:00 - 12:45 :: Mining The Family for Literature

  What’s fair in writing about family? Should you let your mother have it with a Mommie Dearest diatribe or should you let her skeletons remain safely in the closet? Does fair even matter? Can you go after Dad for his shortcomings? And what if a fictionalized character arouses the anger of a person who claims the character is based on him?
   

  Wayson Choy found out some family secrets after the publication of his prize-winning The Jade Peony, and he went on to explore them in his All That Matters. This renowned writer and teacher’s most recent book is the nonfiction, Not Yet.

  Priscila Uppal’s forthcoming memoir has to do with her parents, in particular her mother, whom she did not see for many years. She is a poet, fiction writer, academic, and professor of Humanities and English at the undergraduate and graduate levels at York University. She is the author of eight books of poetry, and two of fiction, among other literary and academic works.
   

• 1:00 - 1:45 :: Bestseller!

  While it’s gratifying to be published and even to have one’s books praised and reviewed well, not much beats writing a bestseller. Eva Stachniak’s The Winter Palace launched right onto the bestseller lists and stayed there for weeks and weeks! Find out what this glorious ride has been like and what lessons out hard-working author learned.

  Eva Stachniak’s first short story, Marble Heroes, was published by the Antigonish Review in 1994, and her debut novel, Necessary Lies, won the Amazon.com/Books in CanadaFirst Novel Award in 2000. She is also the author of Garden of Venus, which has been translated into seven languages. The bestselling The Winter Palace tells the story of a maid in the household of Russia’s Catherine the Great.
   

• 2:00 - 2:45 :: How Am I Doing So Far?

  In this session, a publisher and writing teacher will listen to one minute of your prose (novel, non-fiction, short story) and let you know what they think of the writing and the story. Aspiring writers should bring one anonymous page of an adult novel, memoir or short story to the session and drop it in a box. The aspiring writer should also, in one sentence at the top of the page, describe what the submission is from. Pages will be chosen by lottery (no guarantees that yours will be picked) and read aloud by host and author, Antanas Sileika. Jack David and Kim Moritsugu will each react to the opening lines. This is a rough and ready exercise, not for the faint of heart! Put your email address at the top of the page as well and a Humber writing teacher will send a short comment about the piece by email whether to nor the piece is chosen.

  Jack David, Publisher, of ECW Press, has spent decades in the literary trenches, publishing academic articles about Canadian Writing and then opening up his press, ECW, to publish books ranging from wrestling guides to novels. He is a great friend of students, and has always been willing to listen to a pitch or consider any literary project. He's made people's literary careers with offhand comments during the superbowl.

  Kim Moritsugu is the author of four novels: the romantic comedy Looks Perfect (shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award), the domestic comedy Old Flames, the literary mystery The Glenwood Treasure (shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis Best Crime Novel Award), and the domestic novel The Restoration of Emily (published in May, 2006). She also has a blog called The Hungry Novelist.

• 3:00 - 3:45 :: The Insider's Guide:  How To Get Published in Perilous Times

  
  

  If it was always hard to get published, it’s getting harder still in the brave new world of bloggers, self-publishers, e-books and dwindling sales. This session provides an expert to help pilot you through those perilous waters.

  A former president and publisher of Penguin Books, Cynthia Good, Director, Creative Book Publishing Program, Humber has been in the publishing industry for over twenty-five years.  Under her leadership the roster included such writers as John Ralston Saul, Michael Ignatieff, Michael Adams, Alice Munro, Mordecai Richler, Timothy Findley, Stuart McLean, Peter Robinson, Guy Gavriel Kay and many others.  After twenty years with Penguin, Ms. Good went on to create The Creative Book Publishing Program at Humber College. She lives in Toronto, Ontario.

   

• 4:00 - 4:45 :: Straight To E-Book

  What, no hardback edition to show my friends? No paperback to stuff into my back pocket for the beach? Get ready for the all-digital world. A recently published-by-ebook author and an ebook publisher talk about the advantages and disadvantages and ins and outs of ebook publishing.

  Luba Lesychyn is a graduate of the Humber College Creative Writing program. Her first book, Theft By Chocolate, was epublished in May 2012 by the UK digital publishing company, Attica Books.

  Greg Ioannou has worked in publishing since 1977. He's the publisher at Iguana Books, Canada's first ebook publisher, and is also president of the Editors' Association of Canada.

• 5:00 - 5:45 :: Writing For Children and Young Adults

  Thank God for the parents who buy books for their tykes and thank God those tykes grow into Young Adult readers. The literature for young people is a vast and self-contained universe. Learn all about that universe from one of its most enduring and popular writers and an editor who specializes in planet youth.

  Richard Scrimger has published thirteen books for adults and children. His Nose from Jupiter was a bestseller and won a Mr. Christie Book Award and his other books have been chosen among the year’s best in various places including the Chicago public library.

  Hadley Dyer is the executive editor of children's books at HarperCollins Canada and an author for children and teens. She is also a regular contributor to The Globe and Mail and an instructor in the publishing program at Ryerson University.