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The publishing industry today looks much different than it did a decade ago. In that time, self-publishing has outgrown its longstanding ‘vanity’ stigma and become a viable publishing option for many writers. The traditional publishing industry has also experienced great changes and just isn’t what it used to be – even for those who’ve found success within the system.

This workshop will outline the ways in which self-publishing differs from traditional publishing, and how the unrestricted nature of this path might align better with your publishing needs. We’ll also discuss the process of preparing your manuscript for publication and offer advice on how to successfully navigate the industry.

Register here.

About the Presenter

Diane Cameron is a Publishing Consultant at Friesen Press – the largest publishing services provider in Canada.

Her publishing career spans over 15 years, which includes working for traditional, academic, and self-publishing companies in both Canada and abroad.

Diane’s vast experience and expertise has helped hundreds of authors successfully navigate the publishing landscape and bring their books to life.

Join us for a special workshop hosted by DD alum Denise Da Costa and Reema Patel. Denise and Reema, once mentees in DD’s mentorship programs, have gone on to become published authors. During the workshop, the two will share their writer’s journey as well as advice for aspiring authors who hope to see their work on shelves one day.

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About the Presenters

Denise Da Costa is a Canadian poet, novelist, and essayist whose work is featured in Subdivided: City Building in an Age of Hyper Diversity. She is an alumnus of the Humber School of Writers and 2017 Diaspora Dialogues program. Before earning her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from York University, she studied graphic design, showcasing her work at the annual Eden Mills Art Festival. She resides in the GTA with her husband. Her debut novel, And the Walls Came Down will be published in June 2023 by Dundurn Press.

REEMA PATEL holds a B.A. from McGill University and a J.D. from the University of Windsor. After working in Mumbai in the youth non-profit sector and in human rights advocacy, she has spent the last ten years working in provincial and municipal government. Such Big Dreams is her first novel, an excerpt of which won the Penguin Random House Student Award for Fiction at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. She lives in Toronto, where she works as a lawyer.

Join us on September 10, 2022 at TYPE Books for an evening of bookish fun as we celebrate the launch of Francine Cunningham’s debut collection, God Isn’t Here Today, stories that capture the speculative, horror, and the unreal. Francine will be in conversation with moderator, Terese Mason Pierre.

Register here.

About the Book

Driven by desperation into moments of transformation, Cunningham’s characters are presented with moments of choice-some for the better and some for the worse. A young man goes to God’s office downtown for advice; a woman discovers she is the last human on Earth; an ice cream vendor is driven insane by his truck’s song; an ageing stripper uses undergarments to enact her escape plan; an incubus tires of his professional grind; and a young woman inherits a power that has survived genocide, but comes with a burden of its own.

Even as they flirt with the fantastic, Cunningham’s stories unfold with the innate elegance of a spring fern, reminding us of the inherent dualities in human nature-and that redemption can arise where we least expect it.

About the Author

Francine Cunningham is an award-winning Indigenous writer, artist and educator. God Isn’t Here Today (Invisible Publishing) is her debut collection of short fiction. Her debut book of poems On/Me (Caitlin Press) was nominated for the BC and Yukon Book Prize, the Indigenous Voices Awards, and the Vancouver Book Award. She is a winner of the Indigenous Voices Award in the 2019 Unpublished Prose Category and of The Hnatyshyn Foundation’s REVEAL Indigenous Art Award. Her fiction has appeared in The Best Canadian Short Stories 2021, in Grain Magazine as the 2018 Short Prose Award winner, on The Malahat Review’s Far Horizons Prose shortlist, and in Joyland Magazine, The Puritan and elsewhere. Francine is a graduate of the Creative Writing MFA program at the University of British Columbia, and currently resides in Alberta. Learn more at www.francinecunningham.ca.

About the Moderator

Terese Mason Pierre is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in Canthius, The Puritan, Quill and Quire, and Strange Horizons, among others. She is currently the Senior Poetry Editor of Augur Magazine, a Canadian speculative literature journal, and the author of chapbooks Surface Area (Anstruther Press, 2019) and Manifest (Gap Riot Press, 2020). Terese lives and works in Toronto.

Calling all fiction writers! UK-based agent, Madeleine Millburn, will be the panelist for June’s Lunch N’ Learn on How To Get An Agent.

During this workshop, Madeleine will address the following questions:

how do I write a query letter?

how do I get an agent?

what is the process of a UK agent acquiring a Canadian writer

And more! It is encouraged participants come with questions prepared. Note: Her presentation will be tailored specifically to fiction.

Madeleine founded Madeleine Milburn Ltd in 2012, and it is now a major international literary agency based in the UK. Working with a network of publishers and producers based all over the world, Madeleine represents debut writers, journalists, and established authors. With her tight-knit team, she handles all rights to every book including UK, US, international and Film & TV.

In 2018, Madeleine was named Literary Agent of the Year at the British Book Awards, and was shortlisted again in 2020. She has appeared on The Bookseller’s list of the 150 most influential people in the book trade every year since 2017.

The workshop will take place from 12pm-1pm.

To register, visit: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/how-to-get-an-agent-uk-edition-tickets-157531385615