The Ottawa Public Library's Awesome Authors Youth Writing Contest is back! Young writers of the nation's capital, get to work on your poems, short stories, and comics. You could win publication, glory, cold hard cash! The contest opened on January 10th and it closes on February 24th. Learn all the details from the Awesome Authors… Continue reading Awesome Authors 2023 is on!
Updated February 2023 (with links to a new children's story, "Balloon Party," a fresh take on "Stone Soup" published on the Blue Met website). Back to the 2022 post....I'm resurrecting my old list of Canadian litmags because it's just so handy for short story writers to know the word limits at a glance. Since I'm… Continue reading Stories and Litmags
It's here, awesome authors! The latest volume of Pot-Pourri, containing all the winning stories, poems, and graphic narratives from Ottawa's Awesome Authors aged 9-18. Buy your copy today. Check out the gorgeous cover design by Gaurinanda Abhilash: Once again, the anthology is generously produced by the Friends of the Ottawa Public Library Association (FOPLA), with… Continue reading Pot-Pourri 2022
Join me online on Saturday, January 14th at 1pm EST for a one-hour workshop on characterization: Nice is Not Enough, part of the SCBWI (Canada East) "Digging Deeper" workshop series. Here's the blurb: Nice is Not Enough: Developing Likeable and Unlikeable Characters: What makes us root for a character? How flawed can a protagonist be?… Continue reading Online Character Workshop
It was an honour to be on the jury of the Ottawa Book Awards this year, with fellow jurors Conyer Clayton and Faizal Deen. We considered more than 80 submissions in the English Fiction category, including poetry and prose for all ages. With such a talented pool of authors in Ottawa, it was difficult to… Continue reading Judging the 2022 Ottawa Book Awards
Catherine Austen 