The English Department has a well-established tradition of Creative Writing courses, instructors, and events. Our foremost priorities are to encourage creative writing on the Island, to co-operate with writers' groups on the Island and across Canada, and, above all, to provide artistic training and editorial guidance for beginning and developing writers.
Courses
Our introductory course in Creative Writing I, English 212, encourages students to explore the writing of fiction, poetry, young people's literature, creative non-fiction, and/or scriptwriting. Students discuss each other's writing in a workshop setting.
Creative Writing II, English 392, allows students to develop and to revise manuscripts-in-progress. Workshop classes offer students a more intensive engagement with genres.
Creative Writing III, English 393, affords students the opportuntiy to complete poetry, fiction, and scriptwriting projects, and to explore other aspects of creative writing, e.g., editing and publishing literary magazines, and organizing public readings. Students will prepare their manuscript for submissions to journals, and will give a public reading of their work.
Writing Lives: The Art and Craft of Life-Writing, English 394, offers students the opportunity to study and to practice genres of writing such as memoir, autobiography, biography, and fictive memoir.
Advanced Studies in Creative Writing, English 486, is an advanced workshop in creative writing focusing on one genre such as poetry or fiction or an area of interest such as the relationship between writers’ works and their lives.
The Honours Essay requirement for the Honours English degree may be satisfied with the successful completion of a creative writing manuscript.
Short courses (non-credit) in Creative Writing are occasionally offered through the Department of Lifelong Learning
Enrolment in creative writing courses is limited to 12 students. Submission of a portfolio and permission of the instructor are required to enrol. For further information, contact Richard Lemm at (902) 566-0592 or rlemm@upei.ca.
Instructors
Richard Lemm and Lesley-Anne Bourne are the primary creative writing instructors.
Richard Lemm has published stories and poems in numerous journals. His four books of poetry are Dancing in Asylum, A Difficult Faith, Prelude to the Bacchanal, which won the 1991 Canadian Authors' Association Award for best poetry book, and Four Ways of Dealing with Bullies. He was an award-winner in the 1983 and 1992 CBC Radio Literary Competition and the 1998 League of Canadian Poets National Poetry Contest. His biography of Milton Acorn, the People's Poet of Canada, was published in 1998 by Carleton University Press. He was president of the League of Canadian Poets 1986-88 and a resident instructor in the Writing Program at The Banff Centre of the Arts from 1977 to 1987. Since the early 1980s he has served as a literary editor, manuscript reader, and writing workshop instructor.
Lesley-Anne Bourne received a B.A. Hons. in English and Creative Writing from York University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. She was a recipient of a Canada Council of the Arts writing grant and several scholarships to attend the Writers Studio at The Banff Centre of the Arts. She has published three books of poetry: The Story of Pears (short-listed for the League of Canadian Poets' first-book award), Skinny Girls, and Field Day. She has won the Air Nova/Milton Acorn Poetry Award and Carl Sentner Fiction Award, and received the 1994 Air Canada/Canadian Authors' Association Award for a Canadian writer under thirty with outstanding promise. Her poems and fiction have been included in a half-dozen anthologies. Her first novel, The Bubble Star, was published in 1998 by The Porcupine's Quill Press. She has been an instructor at the Maritime Writers Workshop and Artsperience.
Deirdre Kessler is the author of five children’s novels, including The Private Adventures of Brupp, Brupp on the Other Side, Brupp in the Land of Snow, and Brupp Rides Again, and five picture books, including Lobster in My Pocket and Lena and the Whale. She has won Canadian Children's Book Centre Our Choice Awards for Brupp Rides Again, a young adult novel, and for Lobster in My Pocket, a children's picture book. Kessler’s poetry has been published in Landmarks: An Anthology of Atlantic Poetry, edited by Brent MacLaine and Hugh MacDonald (Acorn Press, 2001); in The New P.E.I. Poets (Ragweed, 1990); in the Toronto literary magazine paperplates; and in other poetry anthologies.
Publication: The Annex
The English Department publishes an annual journal of creative writing by UPEI students. The Annex is edited by creative writingEdit students.
Events
The English Department hosts an annual Winter's Tales reading series of visiting Canadian writers.
The English Department has also co-hosted workshops conducted by local and visiting writers, and has hosted several Writer-in-Residence programs, including residencies by Janice Kulyk Keefer, Sandra Birdsell, David Dale Zieroth, Alistair MacLeod, and Douglas Smith.
For further information about The Annex and events, contact Richard Lemm at 566-0592 or rlemm@upei.ca.
