From student to teacher: KPU alumni lead creative writing workshops with Surrey Libraries

Chantal Houle’s story with Surrey Libraries goes back to her childhood.

Whether it be borrowing books and CDs or attending storytimes and participating in the summer reading program, she took advantage of Surrey Libraries’ free resources.

Now, Houle, who graduated from Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s creative writing program in 2017, will be leading a workshop with Surrey Libraries at the City Centre Branch on May 27. Her session is part of a collection of creative writing workshops led by KPU alumni and offered through a partnership between the university and Surrey Libraries.

Houle’s session is focused on writing children’s literature. She debuted a children’s book last year called Where Kitty Belongs, which is loosely based on a stray cat she and her brother came across as kids and took in.

“This is a story that I had been telling all my life, just in little snippets. People were like, ‘Oh, you have a cat named Kitty. Why is she named Kitty?’ and then I tell a little snippet of the story — she was supposed to be temporary and she stayed,” she says.

“I got to see how other people tell the same story. So in a way, it became its own folktale — the story of the people.”

At the workshop, Houle will guide participants in moving beyond their single-page draft or Word document to see their stories in different forms, such as through activities that explore the spoken-word nature of children’s stories.

“I hope they can see that their voice matters, that there is a place for their story somewhere, and to keep at it,” she says. “Picture books take time, so have patience with the process and with yourself.”

Vietnamese diaspora poet and fellow 2017 KPU creative writing graduate Winston Lê will lead a poetry-writing workshop on April 29 at the Newton Branch.

In addition to being Word Vancouver’s exhibitor manager, Lê is the author of three poetry chapbooks: translanguaging, hybrid utterance, and Thhhhh.

“I write a lot in continuity, so they have all evolved from each other. I’m currently working on my full-length manuscript,” he says. “It’s about themes exploring the disenfranchisement and colonial violence that’s been put onto the Vietnamese language.”

Lê says his workshop will push the boundaries of lyric and persona writing. He will begin by sharing some neologisms, which are newly coined words, such as “triggerlessnesss” and “spirrow” — a portmanteau of “sparrow” and “spiral.”

Participants will then create their own new emotions from the neologisms and craft poems based on them. Lê took inspiration from mask work for the activity, which is the theatre practice of physically or symbolically wearing a mask to depict a character and their heightened emotions.

“It poses the subjectivity of the lyric eye, as they’re creating a more inherent [and] embodied identity than with the subjective eye,” he says. “Readers sometimes think the eye is always the poet, so I want them to really challenge against that.”

Lê hopes participants leave the workshop with a new and different appreciation for poetry. As for KPU creative writing students, he encourages them to immerse themselves in the writing community and experiment with their work.

“Write what only you could write — and I think that’s a great contemporary revision for the ‘write what you know’ adage because … it’s very restrictive towards experiences.”

The workshop series kicked off on March 25 with creative writing graduate Carolina Chavarriaga’s session on writing fictional characters. Kayla MacInnis, who studied journalism and creative writing at KPU, will also lead a workshop on June 24 called Writing from the Land.

For more information and to register for the workshops, visit www.surreylibraries.ca/events.