Kait Labbate, Centretown News
Author Michael Stewart will be hosting creative workshops for youth during the month of Oct. The workshops will provide aspiring writers with pracitcal tips for polishing their work. The Ottawa Public Library’s first-ever writer-in-residence, Michael F. Stewart, is keeping the fight alive to reach young writers in a digital world.
Stewart, a published author from Mississauga who has tackled topics ranging from gender relations to prehistoric vampires, is hosting two workshops this month for child and teen writers.
A former venture capitalist who quit his job on his 30th birthday to start writing professionally, Stewart, now 40, prides himself on his diverse writing background.
“I’ve done fiction, non-fiction, fantasy, thriller, and some others. I’ve done stories for 3-5 year-old’s, 7-12, teens, young adults, and adults,” said Stewart.
He also worked with Scholastics Canada in 2011 to create an interactive storytelling platform that was one of the first campaigns against cyber bullying.
His first workshop this month, meant for children between the ages of 9 and 12, will take place at 6 p.m. on Oct. 15 at the Greenboro library branch at 363 Lorry Greenberg Dr. in Ottawa South.
“I will be focusing on story structure for the first workshop, really looking at how to set up a story,” says Stewart.
The second workshop, on Oct. 17, will start at 2 p.m. at the library’s Main branch at 120 Metcalfe St. on Oct. 17.
Stewart says he will focus on rejection in this workshop, aimed at writers aged 13-18.
“I was thinking that, well, I’ve been rejected a couple hundred times. Why not share what happened with me?”
The library’s manager of program development, Elizabeth Thornley, says she was interested in the idea of a voluntary position and hoped to create a stronger online presence with Stewart on board.
“I actually pitched the idea to them. I had a colleague that was doing it in Toronto and so I pitched it and I got it,” says Stewart.
Over the year, Stewart has maintained an online blog and even ran an online story-writing program that allowed outsiders to watch and comment as he crafted his new story Avatars.
The idea was to make connections with local teen writers, but the story was put on hold after a lack of inspiration and interaction.
In fact, the story didn’t receive a single comment.
Generating interest and finding out how to get more people to interact has been the biggest obstacle explains Stewart.
“I’ve been running workshops at the library for four or five years now. But the numbers were sometimes so low that it was no longer beneficial, it was actually sometimes awkward.”
There were close to 10 attendees at the first workshop hosted in April, but Stewart does not think a real change will come until there is an official position in place.
“The position is technically unofficial. So this gives us a good idea to see what works, what doesn’t work,” says Thornley. “Then we can make a decision about what we want to do moving forward.”
Gabrielle Prendergast, a published teen author and writer-in-residence at the Vancouver Public Library in 2014, agreed that awareness was also her greatest obstacle.
“Many, if not most, of my programs were well attended. But there were some where not a lot of people showed up and that can be discouraging,” says Prendergast.
Throughout her four months in the position, the only marketing came from the library’s website and from newspaper articles published about the announcement of her position.
“This isn’t a small thing. Ultimately, we are helping to keep Canadian writing production alive and well for the future,” says Prendergast.
However, the office hours and individual editing sessions were always well attended and she says she ended up editing close to 40 pieces of writing during her time there.
Stewart also calls for all writers to send in a couple pages of their work for him to edit and give feedback on.
“The most interaction probably comes from the people that send in their work. They usually keep coming back and it starts a sort-of back and forth conversation,” says Stewart.
With only three months left in Stewart’s position, the future of the program is in question.
This could be the last opportunity for youth to receive free writing assistance at the library for a while.