Arts@Home presents award-winning novelist Joan Thomas

Saturday, April 2, 2022, Seven Generations Education Institute, 240 Veterans Drive, Kenora Ontario*

Masks Required

Lake of the Woods Arts Community is thrilled to present award-winning novelist Joan Thomas for two workshops as part of our free Arts@Home program. This feature presentation is made possible through the generous support of the Ontario Arts Council.

Both workshops are for writers of all levels and experience. The morning session, Writing the Real, will be a power-point presentation, where Joan will share her extensive expertise and experience in writing fiction based on real events. In the afternoon, Joan will shift to more informal discussion of Writing Process, with time for individual writing and sharing. You can choose one or both sessions but space is limited for both sessions. Register early!

*All public health guidelines will be followed. If a live presentation is not possible, we will shift to online with adequate notice to all participants.

Writing the Real

9 a.m. to 12 noon

This workshop will investigate the literary sweet spot where imagination and actuality meet. Joan will talk about the research and writing processes she relies on, and we will look at the methods of a range of novels that treat real events and characters (from history or from more recent news) in forceful and contemporary ways. Participants will be invited to reflect on the artistic and ethical questions that writers consider as they locate, within real life stories, the subversive truths of fiction. 

To ensure adequate social distancing, space for this workshop is limited to 30 participants.

A light breakfast and beverages will be provided.

Writing Process

1 p.m. to 4 p.m.

In this interactive workshop Joan will look at some of the challenges she encountered in her writing journey, opening the floor for open discussion, writing and sharing.

Space for the afternoon workshop is limited to 15 participants.

Afternoon refreshments and snacks provided.

Register here for the morning session – Afternoon is full

Please note that a light breakfast is being provided but lunch is not included for those taking both sections as this was not included in our funding. The space will remain open over the lunch hour however, if you wish to bring a bag lunch or have loving family who will deliver lunch!

About Joan

Joan Thomas’s fourth novel Five Wives won the 2019 Governor General’s Award for Fiction. Described by the Globe and Mail as “brilliant, eloquent, curious, far-seeing,” it is an immersive dive into a real event, the ill-fated attempt by five American families to move into the territory of the reclusive Waorani people in Ecuador in 1956.

Joan’s three previous novels are intimate depictions of characters in times of rapid social change. Reading by Lightning, set in World War 2, won the 2008 Amazon Prize and a Commonwealth Prize. Curiosity, based on the life of the preDarwinist fossilist Mary Anning, was nominated for the 2010 Giller Prize and the IMPAC Dublin Award. The Opening Sky, a contemporary novel about a family navigating a crisis, won the 2014 McNally Robinson Prize and was a finalist for the Governor Generals Award.

Joan lives in Winnipeg. Before beginning to write fiction, she was a longtime book reviewer for national publications. In 2014, Joan was awarded the Writers Trust of Canada Engel Findley Prize for mid-career achievement.