The Whistler Writers Festival has announced its writer in residence for the year, award-winning novelist Shaena Lambert, who will mentor established and emerging writers looking to improve their work.
The festival’s first in-person writer-in-residence program since 2019, the guest author will work with scribes on a specific project in the months of September and October at the Alta Lake Artists’ Cabin next door to the Point Artist-Run Centre.
“We’re so thrilled to have Shaena join us to lead this intensive workshop program,” said festival director Rebecca Wood Barrett in a release. “Her work is timely, insightful, well-researched, and immersively written, and her experience and talent is going to be so valuable for the participants who sign up for the program.”
Lambert is the author of four works of fiction, Oh, My Darling; Radiance; The Falling Woman; and Petra, one of CBC’s Best Books of the Year in 2020 and winner of the 2021 Ethel Wilson Award for best work of fiction in B.C. and Yukon. Inspired by trail-blazing German activist Petra Kelly, a founding member of the German Green Party who was murdered in 1992 by her partner, Petra is the kind of historical fiction The Boston Globe said “brings Kelly to the fore in a way that no biography or work of scholarship yet has.”
Lambert joins past Whistler writers in residence like Joseph Boyden (The Orenda), Wayne Grady (Emancipation Day), Sarah Selecky (Radiant Shimmering Light), Susan Juby (The Truth Commission), and Paulette Bourgeois (Franklin’s Bad Day).
Participants are chosen on a first-come, first-served basis and must submit their manuscripts (up to 15 double-spaced pages in 12-size font) by Monday, Aug. 15. Works can be fiction or non-fiction. Over the two months, participants take part in four one-on-one session with Lambert, as well as group lectures to help elevate their work.
Anyone interested should email Wood Barrett at writers@whistlerwritersfest.com. The program typically sells out every year.
The 2022 Whistler Writers Festival is scheduled for Oct. 13 to 16. Learn more at whistlerwritersfest.com.
