Guest Contributors

W hen you join our school, you get to be part of a big, inspiring creative collective. 

One of the reasons our creative writing programs are so successful is because we connect writers to a wide network of writers, artists, teachers, healers, visionaries, and experts.  We believe in artistic cross-training: our creative writing benefits from the unexpected insights we receive through guidance, conversation, and experimentation with a variety of sources. 

Every year, a guest expert visits the Story Course Intensive to teach students about a special topic in a MindShare Session. I ask guests specifically about their pitfalls, and how they got out of them, so students can learn from their experiences. Our writers are advised by authors they love—like Eden Robinson, Margaret Atwood and George Saunders—as well as from leaders in other fields, like psychology, leadership, design, music, and humour.  

Then there are the authors who judged our Little Bird Writing Contest! Authors like Cherie Dimaline and Sheena Kamal, who not only selected winning stories for our published anthology, but also recorded a podcast with me, to talk about writing, revision, publishing, and more. Our contest ran for ten years, from 2011-2021, and you can listen to those audio sessions here.

Guest mentors also visit our members in Centered once a month to lead workshops, teach short courses, and give lectures on special topics. They might be professional advisors—like literary agent Chelene Knight and Enneagram consultant Chichi Agoram— or they could be artists working in the field, like poet Susan Buis and memoirist Jackie Kai Ellis.

Guest contributors also include people like Jennifer Schramm, who have co-taught writing workshops with me to include horses (yes, horses!), Annie Bray, who supports our writers with trauma-aware somatic practices and massage (when I do in-person retreats).

As you can see, our writing community is deeply embedded in a community of support and inspiration. 

Writing may be a solo pursuit, but at SSWS, you are never really alone.

Meet some of our inspiring guests from the literary world—and beyond!  

Love,