Writing Outside the Cage
A workshop with Merilyn Simonds
Pre-registration required
COMING SOON
Early bird rate (until May 17) $30.00 per registration
Regular rate $40.00 per registration
Almonte Readers & Writers is pleased to present the June series of Art of Writing workshops and courses exploring aspects of creative and technical skills development in literary arts, offered as part of the 2025 Lanark Lit Festival of Writing.
Overview
Writers are often told to write what they know, yet this can feel limiting. Empathy, freedom of the imagination, and freedom of expression are fundamental to creation. But how can we responsibly imagine the other—older, younger, richer, poorer, widely gendered, differently abled? Join Merilyn Simonds for an intensive workshop on how to shatter our presumptions, assumptions, and prejudices and write ourselves out of the cage of what we already know.
What will we do in this workshop?
Using examples from published fiction and nonfiction texts, we'll discuss strategies for ethically imagining the "other," then through exercises discussed by the class, the participants will experiment with writing outside the cage of their assumptions.
Who is this workshop for?
This class is appropriate for writers of all genres and all levels from emerging to experienced writers.
About the instructor:
Merilyn Simonds is the internationally published author of 22 books, including the novel The Holding, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and the Canadian classic nonfiction novel, The Convict Lover, a finalist for the Governor General’s Award. Among her best-selling nonfiction is A New Leaf, the story of her gardens north of Kingston, and Gutenberg’s Fingerprint, a meditation on reading, writing, and the future of the printed book. Her most recent work—Woman, Watching, the Foreword Indies Editor’s Choice Nonfiction Award for 2022—is an innovative memoir/biography of Louise de Kiriline Lawrence, an extraordinary recluse who changed the way we see birds. Simonds's memoir, Walking with Beth: Conversations with my 100-Year-Old Friend is forthcoming from Random House Canada in September, 2025.
Simonds was adjunct professor in the MFA Creative Writing department at UBC, Kwantlen University in Vancouver, and University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. She has taught creative writing workshops at the Banff Centre, Sage Hill Writing Experience, and dozens of literary festivals in Canada and Mexico. She has been writer-in-residence in several communities and continues to mentor emerging writers working in both fiction and creative nonfiction.
The 2025 Lanark Lit Festival of Writing is presented by Almonte Readers & Writers thanks to the generous funding support of Lanark County, the Municipality of Mississippi Mills, the Perth & District Community Foundation, and the Elizabeth Kelly Library Foundation, with community partnership from the Mississippi Mills Public Library, the Perth & District Public Library, Mill Street Books, and the Almonte Writers Guild
