Alumni News

Paige was nominated for several major literary prizes

Paige's short story collection Zolitude was on the Giller Prize longlist this fall. It’s also been shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award, the Concordia First Book Prize, and the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction.

Darrel's first book was published and nominated for a Governor General's Award

My first book, a memoir entitled Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age was published by Douglas and McIntyre this fall and was nominated for a Governor General's Literary Award.

Annette published a short story

Annette's very first published fiction short story went online this month.

Linda is publishing her first novel

My first novel, Fishing for Birds, is coming out with Inanna Publications in Spring 2019!

I'm grateful to Sarah and her grounding lessons, along with the supportive community that she has cultivated.

Clare was selected for AWP's Writer to Writer mentor program

I was recently selected to participate in AWP's Writer to Writer mentor program! This was my second time applying and I was thrilled to get in. During the program, I will have the opportunity to work one on one with Pushcart Prize winning author Allegra Hyde on revising my short stories and starting my novel.

I will always be so grateful for my Story Intensive experience. It truly was the beginning of my writing life.

Lana won second place in a contest she's been entering for years

I got second place in Geist's Postcard Lit contest, issue #109. I'v been entering the contest for 8 years. Sometimes multiple entries. The published piece is called "Quit."

Susanne is publishing her stories and pitching a novel

I took the Story Intensive in 2014. It was an incredible experience, which I have written to you about before. Since I finished the course I've taken my writing so much more seriously. As a result I've had a range of stories published, including one in Ambit (2016) and The Stinging Fly (2017). This year I've been a finalist of the Irish Novel Fair at Irish Writers Centre, Dublin, a competition for unpublished manuscripts, where my novel was selected alongside 11 others from a total of 250 submissions. It's been such a wonderful buzz, and I've just pitched the novel to 17 agents and publishers ...onwards and upwards from here.

I was also a participant of the XBorders: Accord project at Irish Writers Centre, Dublin, and recently read from a new short story at the project showcase at the centre.

Also, my story 'Aubergine', which emerged out of the dialogue week on the Story Intensive, was featured on the TSS website in May.

I feel the Story Intensive has been instrumental in helping me trust my voice and doing the work of showing up at the desk day after day after day. The emphasis on free writes and writing by hand were just as important in that regard as the course reader with its stellar selection of contemporary fiction and the masterclasses with Karen Joy Fowler, Margaret Atwood, George Saunders and others.

Carol is starting her MFA

I've started an MFA in Creative Writing at Queens University of Charlotte and am the President of the Writers' Guild of Alberta.

Andrew published his first book

First publication. Picture book for ages 4-8, with CrackBoom! Books (the same house that publish les Caillou). Title is How to Catch a Bear Who Loves to Read or, in French, Comment attraper un ours qui aime lire. I wrote the English version, my co-writer on the book, Juliana Léveillé-Trudel, wrote the French version, and we came up with the story together. Will be release Oct/Nov 2018 across French and English Canada, in USA, and in a few countries overseas. Find it online here.

Malcolm is actively participating in the writing community

I'm slogging toward first ebook publishing (everything takes longer than I expected). My website is close to done. I get a few more newsletter signups after each Open Mic reading and several people who've beta-read Do the Wrong Thing, Book One, who promise to write an Amazon review. It comes out on August 31st on Amazon.

I adapted a piece from my book to read at the Vancouver Story Slam last fall, then got asked to read in their Halloween special. The piece I wrote for and performed at the Halloween special was either loved or hated. At any rate, lots of talk about it which, in the end, is good publicity.

Vancouver Writers Group now has over 3500 members; though, only about 12 to 15 show up to share work every 2 weeks. Newcomers often comment on the quality of work being shared. Almost everyone who shows up is working seriously on a novel, memoir or short story and there's a core group of repeats working on publish-ready stuff.

Anne's short story placed in a contest

My short story, The Provider was selected as a finalist for the CRAFT Short Fiction contest and will be published in the magazine later this year.

Cheryl opened a writing retreat in Costa Rica

I'm a two-time graduate of the Story Intensive. It has been my dream for almost 30 years to move to Costa Rica and open a writing retreat there. Well, here I am and I'm finally living my dream of living in Costa Rica and helping fellow writers achieve their goals. So freaking excited! Visit the website.

Jeannie is publishing her short stories and an editor gave wonderful comments

My piece was selected for publication in The Fiddlehead. In the acceptance letter, the editor called my writing "brilliant." It really affected me. She wasn't talking about what had happened to me, she was talking about the way I had crafted the story — the details I included, the "deft storytelling." She called the story "crucial."

When it rains it pours, as they say. Yet another of my stories has been accepted for publication in Filling Station!

Jennifer's short story is being published

I've had an acceptance at a dream journal for one of my short stories. I'm thrilled that my story, "Sometimes a Tree," which I began shortly after I completed the Story Intensive while all those lovely writing juices were still fresh and flowing, will be published at the Stonecoast Review this summer.

Ivy's short story is winning prizes

My story "Beijing Spring" was named as one of 12 finalists out of a field of almost 500 submissions in the Writers' Union of Canada Short Prose Competition for Emerging Writers. This was the first contest that I'd entered after completing the Story Intensive, and was workshopped with a group of writers from my class group after the course ended. I'm so grateful for the wonderful learning environment that was created through the coursework, Sonal's guidance and support, and the community of writers I am now a part of that has evolved as a result of the class.

Another version of the same story won the Ottawa Public Library 50+ contest.

Maureen will be pursuing a Masters program

I'll be working towards a Masters in Literature through Middlebury's Bread Loaf School of English, beginning this summer at their Oxford University location in the UK.

Through this school, I learned both what I knew about myself as a writer, and which steps I personally needed to take to continue to grow.

Annie's story was published in Ellipsis Zine

That’s not the important bit.

The part that has really made an impression on those who have read it so far is the fragment of the story created in the Story Intensive which was never used but for an exercise that we had to do. It was the exercise where we take another’s words we like and replace them with our own, noun by noun and verb by verb. And I remember others in my class had a tough time with this exercise and changed the syntax so it “made more sense” and I didn’t, as per your directions. But, I couldn’t use it either for anything in the Story Intensive — so it lives inside this story now.

Scroll down the part where it says: “Angeli’s thoughts are swirling...” That entire paragraph is from the Story Intensive!

Read the story here.

Hajera's story "Waiting For Adnan" was published on Joyland Canada

Hajera's writing has appeared in the Ottawa Citizen and the National Post, but this is her first fiction publication! Read it here.

Frances was published widely and is about to release a novella

Pleased to say I have a story in this new issue of TNQ. It wasn't written while I was doing the Story Course but Sarah Selecky had great ideas for revision that helped me nudge my story into shape.

I've also had poems in The Fiddlehead, The Antigonish Review and an awesome new online journal, the /temz/ review, as well as writing in some Ottawa-based publications.

My novella, Tower, will be released on June 1! My website is francesboyle.com.

Amanda completed a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing

I signed up for the Story Course several years ago and ended up doing the Intensive in the following fall. Work that I did in the Intensive led me to submit a story to a Glimmer Train contest, where I placed as a finalist. After much thought, and a lot of encouragement from the Story Course family, I applied to graduate school to pursue my MFA in creative writing. In January of 2018 I successfully defended my creative thesis and I graduated this May!

If it hadn't been for this course, and the online "family" I met who worked through the course with me, I never would have had the courage to pursue my dream and complete my MFA.

Suzannah received a grant and was published in a literary magazine

I applied for a Literary Creation Grant from the Ontario Arts Council when I was a TA for the Story Intensive last year, and Sarah asked that I let her and the other teachers know the outcome. Well, just found out today that I did get a grant! Also, I recently found out that a short story I finished writing while teaching the Intensive is going to be published in the spring issue of Prairie Fire. So thankful to everyone at Sarah Selecky Writing School for the sound teaching and amazing support!

Nancy is publishing a piece of nonfiction

Dunes Review is publishing my short nonfiction piece, "Beneath," in April. This is the first time I've had something accepted by a journal.

Thank you to the Story Course! It helped me loosen up, stretch, and experiment. Also to feel good about writing, and continuing on the journey.

Margaret has been publishing and winning awards for her short stories.

My "real" writing started on a hot summer night in 2013 in Amsterdam when I decided to purchase The Story Course. By then, I had been receiving the Daily Prompts for a few months and I decided that I wanted to up my game.

I liked the course so much that that fall I enrolled in The Story Intensive. Fast forward to 2017 and this is what I have to report:

I'm in my final year of creative writing MFA at UBC; I have published two nonfiction pieces in Geist and four short stories in Prairie Fire, Numero Cinq, Broken Pencil, The Intima, and The Examined Life Journal. My non-fiction writing has won the Hamilton Short Works Prize and a national contest in Poland (in translation), and was shortlisted for EVENT CNF contest. This year, a story I published in Prairie Fire was nominated by its editors for the Journey Prize—I didn't make the anthology, but it was such a rush to get that email!

Kelly published her novel to great acclaim.

Enrolled in the story course in 2014. Finished and published my novel-in-stories, Garden for the Blind, with Wayne State University Press the following year. It was chosen as a Michigan Notable Book, Foreword Review Indiefab Finalist, Midwest Book Award Finalist, Eric Hoffer Award Finalist and IPPY Bronze Medalist.

Milena's short story was published and she has recently completed a collection of stories.

In late 2013 I left my "regular" job as the director of a nonprofit evaluation group to pursue creative writing full-time. After stumbling around and trying a few community writing classes in Pittsburgh, I came across Sarah's website, her story prompts, and information about her online writing course, The Story Intensive. (I actually discovered Sarah's website from a post by Suzannah Windsor, another alum, who had published one of my essays in her beautiful journal, Compose.) By the end of the summer, 2014, I knew I needed some better structure to my writing practice, and so I signed up for The Story Intensive, TA'ed by the wonderful Lana Pesch. I loved the weekly assignments and lucked out with an incredible group of committed, talented, and thoughtful writing buddies.

"Birthday Party" came out of the Story Intensive exercise of writing 100 unrelated sentences, then arranging the sentences into a story. It is an exercise I've used several times since, when I feel stuck for ideas and just need to get myself writing. I've been working on the story since that first draft in 2014, finally adapting the piece into a (very mature) YA short story. One of the best parts of having it published has been the excuse to reach out to Lana and our writers' group and hear what everyone is up to. Sharing around emails reminded me of the different comments my Story Intensive readers provided me in those early drafts, and how important they were in shaping the path of the story.

I've recently finished a collection of short stories (and am looking for an agent or publisher 🙂 ). The first story in the collection also came from one of the Story Intensive writing exercises, and happened to be my first print publication last year. I am so grateful to The Story Intensive for setting me out on a solid writing foot. Thank you, Sarah and Lana and the women from my Story Intensive TA group!

Melinda was published in The New Quarterly.

My article on revision called A Better Story will be coming out in the Winter edition of The New Quarterly. I'm very thrilled.

Pia's short story won an award.

I bought the Story Course in March 2016 and went slowly through it. In Spring 2017 I finally reached lesson 6 and the famous 100-sentence-practise. I had been looking forward to this and I think, I expected something magic to happen. I used a new character for it, which I stumbled upon while I was using one of the writing prompts. Writing those 100 sentences turned out to be extremely difficult for me. I could only do this exercise in 20-minute-blocks, so it took me many days to complete it. I hated every minute of it. Nothing magic happened. I wrote some bad stuff, that’s all. After finishing I couldn’t turn the character away and so I kept on working with this story.

In June I finished the short story and sent it to a competition in July. It won an award called “Moerser Literaturpreis,” which meant a huge honour and a decent check. None of the 100 sentences ended in the final version of the story, but they helped me to get to know the character and the terrain of the story.

Christina published a creative nonfiction essay in the Coachella Review.

This creative nonfiction essay came out of a series of wild freewrites scattered over about two years, from the ten-minute warm-up prompts that have been a part of my writing practice since I met Sarah back in 2009. I wrote these freewrites (as I always do) as if no one would ever read them. This is something I believe every time I do a writing exercise, or have managed to trick myself to believe, so that I can write without self-consciousness.

My analytical, plotting mind could never have convinced me to write this story, but I began to notice and become curious about the gathering pool of related scenes seeping up through the cracks of my fiction. I listened to my writing friends when I needed to ask the questions: What is this? Is this something? And I listened when they said: Yes! Keep going!

When I finally decided to steer straight into this piece, it became a deliberate exercise, a challenge to break open an old, stale story and peel away the summary that hid the discomfort and vulnerability beneath. I don't remember writing a lot of the paragraphs and scenes, and was continually surprised by the images and connections that bubbled up. I wanted to keep this piece as raw and as close to true (and unreliable) memory as I could, to share the unfiltered experience of the jumble and drift of thought, beliefs, images. The writing was quite effortless after years of practice with freewriting, drift, and always turning toward the discomfort while writing. The letting go of the piece was the difficult part. I am grateful to the Sarah Selecky / Story Is a State of Mind community (whether we've met in person or online) for the structure and support that helped me through the process of writing and release.

Suzannah stuck with a story until it was published in Geist.

In 2013, after working through The Story Course, I chose one of Sarah’s daily writing prompts (“Write a scene that takes place at a rink”) as the basis for a story to submit to the Little Bird Contest. The story didn’t place, so I shelved it for a couple of years, only coming back to it every so often to jot down ideas about revisions that might help flesh out the story more fully. Finally I decided to do some serious revision on the piece—which ended up taking well over a year before it was ready to submit to literary magazines—because I still felt it had a lot of potential.

I was delighted when Geist offered to publish my story, “Will There Be Any Stars?,” which they did in early 2017. I’m especially excited that this is my first Canadian publication.

Leslie was the winner of the 2016 CBC Creative Nonfiction prize for "Adaptation" and published a picture book, In The Red Canoe.

The Story Intensive changed my writing, changed me, in ways I can't even begin to articulate. I was in the first course and am still in touch with two of my cohort. October 2016 saw the release of my first picture book for kids, In The Red Canoe (Orca Books). I am indebted to Sarah and SSM for getting me writing and keeping me writing.

Carrie was published in Racket and is working on a novel.

One of the stories I wrote recently found a home! My story is called “Rescue,” and it is published in an anthology of new Newfoundland writing called Racket, along with stories by the other members of my writing group, Port Authority.

Carrie is now finishing up the first draft of her novel which is the creative thesis for her master's at Memorial University in St. John’s, NL.

Susan has published several articles in print and online magazines.

Susan’s article “Sample Size of 2” was published in March 2016. She also had an article appear in the March/April 2017 issue of Vermont Magazine and a few pieces in the online magazine The Sunlight Press.

Stormy published her novel, The Drowning Shark: A Sierra Rouge Adventure.

Two years ago, my husband and I carved out three days to go through The Story Course together. We'd been struggling in our process of co-writing a YA novel we'd been working on. The exercises helped us clarify our own voices, but also get in sync with each other and polish our writing and storytelling skills. Today, we are excited to share that our novel (The Drowning Shark: A Sierra Rouge Adventure) has been published! Thank you Sarah Selecky for such a great course!

Lara was shortlisted for the Geist CanLit Short Story Contest and published in the Danforth Review.

Lara started a blog of love letters to dead writers which is on hiatus, but she does hope to return to it. One of those posts was featured on the Ottawa Arts Review blog.

In September 2016, she published the story “Posy” in the Danforth Review that was started in the Intensive. She was also shortlisted for the Geist CanLit Short Story Contest for what she says is a very rude story about Nickleback.

Currently she is "sort of working on some creative non-fiction stuff and have two plays slowly brewing."

"Sarah and the Intensive did so much for my relationship with writing and I am so grateful for what she has created. I did the Monday night live writing practice sessions this spring while I was bedridden and it was such a wonderful way to feel a bit more like myself again. I'm very grateful."

Loucas' story won first prize and will be published in Island Writer Magazine.

I graduated from the Story Intensive with four complete short stories that came out of the lessons and assignments of the course. Inspired by the material, my teacher, and my classmates, I wrote the most and best I had written in years. Out of sheer bravado, I submitted my final critiqued story to Prism International's Annual Short Story Contest. My story was long-listed (but not published) with 14 others from a field of 450 submissions. This was the first time I truly felt like a writer.

My story was then summarily rejected eight times in a row. This was the second time I truly felt like a writer.

Meanwhile, on a whim, I pulled my Story Intensive assignment on dialogue and at 750 words send in to a flash fiction magazine, practically unchanged. It was accepted for publication with flattering editorial remarks, and was published, practically unchanged. True writer feelings for a third time.

Back to the rejected story. I revised it from 3,700 words to 2,500 words with the intention of submitting it to the annual contest of my local writers' association. But first I enrolled in the Story Workshop (for a second time) and put my story through the scrutiny and feedback of my teacher and classmates. I fine-tuned it with their input and sent it in. It took first prize and will be published this December in the literary journal of the Victoria Writers' Association, Island Writer Magazine.

Two more of my stories from The Story Intensive are now making the rounds. A novella of speculative fiction is also in the works—by someone who now feels like a genuine writer, so watch out. Many thanks to Steph VanderMeulen, Jennifer Manuel, and Sonal Champsee, and the dozen or so kindred spirits from around the world who guided me and inspired me through one stint of The Story Intensive and two of The Story Workshop.

Cheryl won a short story contest.

I won a short story contest! The story was created through The Story Intensive a couple of years ago. The character first appeared as a result of the prompt, "Other people's problems." My feedback group latched onto the one sentence about him so I did the plot and drift lesson (the BEST lesson ever) on his story and continued with another scene for him in the dialogue lesson (another Best!). I kept going back and forth between these lessons to complete the story and then polished it up, and now it's a winner and I got paid! Hopefully the first of many.

Susan was nominated for The Journey Prize and published in the Eden Mills Writers' Festival chapbook.

“Martin and Amar,” a short story that I wrote as my final assignment for The Story Intensive in 2015 in Jen Manuel's group, just garnered one of the spots in the Read at Fringe contest plus publication in the Eden Mills Writers' Festival chapbook. This September 10th, I had the privilege of reading alongside such luminaries as Emma Donoghue and Lisa Moore. Thanks again Sarah for taking my writing up a notch, as since the course my stories have made it past the first round of judges in the CBC contest and have been nominated for The Journey Prize.

Paige's book of short stories will be published by Biblioasis.

Six years after I signed up for the Story Course, my book of short stories, Zolitude, is coming out with Biblioasis in February 2018. I'm also headed back to Banff for October to spend a month at the Leighton Colony, which is basically a childhood dream come true.

Purabi has been working on her craft and researching her second novel.

I attended two conferences, two pitch slams, query letter workshops, met wonderfully talented people and we are now part of a group.

Recently I visited Jerusalem. A small but significant part of my second novel takes place here and it was immensely satisfying to be able to get under the skin of my heroine even if it was for a short while. I now know more about her than when I started to portray her character in my novel.

Tanya has been published in PRISM International and Nomfiction, and was a runner up in the Writers Adventure Camp short story competition.

Around this time last year, I started a story in The Story Intensive. It was about a time, in 1985, when my grandfather convinced me that I could lay chicken eggs. Flash forward one year…and the addition of one talking cat…and that story has found its home in the fall issue of PRISM International! I am so, so excited, and so, so grateful. This story would not exist without this course.
— September 2016

Last summer, I published a short piece of creative non-fiction with Little Fiction I Big Truths. Although I began this story a long time ago, I was only able to start *listening* to it, and allowing it to be what it wanted to be, through the lessons in The Story Course and the Story Intensive. Today, I got my first glimpse of Nomfiction, the print anthology that contains my story! I'm so, so proud to be a part of this, and to have my work alongside these talented writers.
— March 27, 2016

Tanya was also a runner up in the 2nd annual Writers Adventure Camp short story competition.
— Summer 2017