McLaughlin Library event cultivates writing community
Reading week proved an opportune time for writing enthusiasts to pick up their pen and paper and learn from the pros at the fourth annual Writers Workshop, held on Feb. 20 and 21 in McLaughlin Library.
The event welcomed aspiring writers from both campus and the greater community. Participants could choose from 20 engaging workshops on a variety of pertinent topics, including social media, creative writing, magazine writing, and academic writing.
This is the second year the event has been free to attend, and it proved to be wildly popular. The event was at full capacity, with around 400 people who registered three weeks in advance, and many more on the waiting list.
“We’ve more than doubled in our attendees,” said Jodie Salter, a Writing Specialist from the Library Learning Commons. This is the third year Salter has been organizing the event.
“Last year we had 280 attendees throughout the entire two days. This year… we’ve had 595,” said Salter. Registration was full to capacity, an increase attributed to better advertising, word of mouth through the community, and people tweeting about the event.
Participants were required to pre-register for each day, and then choose which workshops to attend. “Social Media Engagement,” “The Grammar Geeks’ Gab Session,” “You Can Write for Magazines and Newspapers,” “Thesis Writing: Tools for Success,” and “Writing Fiction That Sells” were just a few of the options.
When asked about the event’s growing popularity, Salter explained, “I think its because there’s a broad range of writing topics, from social media, [to] publishing options, creative writing, fiction and nonfiction, and academic workshops, and because they’re free its an amazing opportunity for the community to have access to workshops that may not normally be available,” said Salter.
Writing can often be considered a solitary activity, but events such as this provide an important opportunity to network and make connections with other writers from within the local creative community.
“The other thing that is different [this year] is that we have more local authors presenting, so about half of our presenters roster [is] local – local being Guelph and surrounding area,” said Salter. The presenters holding the workshops do so as unpaid volunteers, contributing their time to allow the event to happen.
“A lot of our presenters have come from outside the university, so it’s really helped build that university-community collaboration,” said Salter.