Finding your way through the weed bed of a writer’s life can be daunting. Join Muskoka Authors Association on July 14, for a presentation by Author, Sandra Nicholls, who has been through it all. Grit, guts, and glory is one writer’s experience with agents, publication, grants, juries, Amazon, self-publishing, self-marketing, self-doubt, and sticking to your vision.
Writers know it takes grit and guts to keep going. So here are some strategies for getting the work done (grit); coping with rejection, believing in your vision, and learning resilience (guts); and creating meaning, slowing down time, and finding comfort in a well-crafted sentence (glory).
Sandra Nicholls is the author of two critically acclaimed, award-winning collections of poetry, and a debut novel that reviewers have compared to the work of Annie Proulx, calling it “meticulously crafted” and “engaging, uplifting and intelligent.” A finalist for the K. M. Hunter Artists Award for Literature, And the Seas Shall Turn to Lemonade continues to receive excellent reviews and ratings on Amazon (5 star) and Goodreads (4.14 avg). After winning the Archibald Lampman Award, Woman of Sticks, Woman of Stones went on to be short-listed for the Pat Lowther Award for the best book of poetry by a Canadian woman. A poem from her first collection, The Untidy Bride, took third prize in the international Stephen Leacock Competition. Her poems and short stories have been anthologized and published in the Globe and Mail, The Antigonish Review, Room, Grain, The New Quarterly, and other literary magazines. She once had the pleasure of being Poet-in-Residence for the Peter Gzowski Golf Tournament for Literacy.
The author has recently completed two other novels; The Third Road, which tells the seldom-heard story of a young Chinese girl in 1948 Malaya, caught in a brutal guerrilla war with colonial Britain, and The Ornamental Man, a work of literary suspense about a woman who hires a hermit to live in the shed in her garden, after her husband dies. She is also working on a book of short stories, Aisle 16, and a new collection of poems, Songs for Invisible Ladies.
For several years Sandra was a part-time lecturer in the Department of English at St Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, and she has taught creative writing as part of the Continuing Education Department at the University of Ottawa. She has also given workshops in fiction and poetry in Ottawa, Montreal, and Antigonish. A recent graduate of the Humber College Correspondence Program in Creative Writing, Sandra also worked for over 20 years in the federal government, the last ten as a speechwriter.
Sandra also works regularly with her husband, musician and composer Roddy Ellias, writing lyrics for both jazz and classical songs. Her latest project in this area was writing the libretto for Sleeping Rough, a chamber opera about a homeless man, which was performed to sold-out crowds at the Music and Beyond Festival in Ottawa during the summers of 2018 and 2019. They are currently working on Suite for the Empty Streets, a cycle of songs about life during the pandemic.
Zoom Room opens at 6:50 pm; meeting starts at 7:00 pm.
Fee: MAA Members: Free, Non-Members: $20
For more information and to register, visit MuskokaAuthors.ca Upcoming Events https://www.eventbrite.ca/o/muskoka-authors-association-14835018265 to receive a link to the ZOOM Meeting, or call David Bruce Patterson at 705-801-8074.
