Members Blog – Page 2 – Creative Nonfiction Collective

Autobiographical Poetry

December 5, 2023

Craft, Guest Blog Posts, Interviews, Members, Members Blog, Poetry

Autobiographical Poetry: Interview with Kate Rogers About Hollay Ghadery: Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian writer living in Ontario. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions (2021) and winner of The Canadian Bookclub Award for nonfiction/memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box, came out Radiant Press in 2023 and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, is scheduled for release with Gordon…

Interview with Colleen Brown

November 2, 2023

Craft, General News, Guest Blog Posts, Members, Members Blog

Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian writer living in Ontario. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions (2021) and is a finalist for The Canadian Bookclub Awards. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box, came out Radiant Press in 2023 and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, is scheduled for release with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Hollay is a poetry…

Not Just Mine To Tell

September 21, 2023

Guest Blog Posts, Members Blog

Mary Fairhurst Breen is the author of the memoir Any Kind of Luck at All and the children’s books Pride and Persistence: Stories of Queer Activism and Awesome Andie’s Best of the Block. As a queer feminist author, writing is Mary’s current form of activism after decades spent working for social change and protesting for equal rights. She lives in Toronto. __ In 2021 I published a memoir, after years of revisions necessitated by both life events and intense consultations with interested parties. The people whose…

How to Write About Trauma in Memoir

April 6, 2023

Craft, Guest Blog Posts, Members Blog, Resources

Brittany Foster is a freelance writer and editor living in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She holds a Graduate Certificate in Publishing from Toronto Metropolitan University and is a student in the MFA in Creative Nonfiction program at the University of King’s College. She’s also writing her first book — a memoir titled You, Me, and the Tree. You’ll find her writing or editing bylines in a wide variety of publications, including a short story anthology, a Canadian historical fiction trilogy, the…

A Small Selection of Favourite Craft Books

December 10, 2022

Craft, Guest Blog Posts, How to Be a Happy Writer, Members Blog, Resources

AnnMarie MacKinnon is a CNFC member and board member. She shares a thoughtful list of books on the craft of writing creative nonfiction, for yourself or as a gift for another writer in your life. _ In just a week, winter will be upon us. The short days and long evenings of the season practically beg us to embrace the hygge mood and curl up with a book. And what better way to spend a few of those darker hours…

One CNFC member’s very unusual publishing journey

November 7, 2018

Members Blog, Publishing

“You have stolen my image,” read the subject line. I waited until I had a few minutes of spare time to read the rest of the email. It was Friday. Deadline day at the Haliburton Echo, a weekly community newspaper where I’d been interning for two months. I had until noon to file all my stories and photos for the week. When I finally read the email, sent by an Indian photographer by the name of Udayan Sankar Pal, I…

How to Host a Literary Cabaret in Six Easy Steps

November 24, 2016

General News, Members Blog, Resources

Do you miss seeing and talking to your fellow creative nonfiction writers in the long months between conferences? Do you want to develop more awareness of great nonfiction in your own town? The CNFC can help you create your own literary cabaret evening right where you are. We have a modest fund to help with promotion, including the design and distribution of digital flyers or posters, and can contribute toward venue rental, if need be.

Uncovering life’s silences and hidden assumptions

February 18, 2016

Members Blog

CNFC member Sue Harper interviews Michael V. Smith – poet, novelist, writing prof, and recent author of his first memoir, My Body Is Yours: Books help us contain a kind of emotion that might be unpleasant, so we might get a better perspective on it and have a more sophisticated reaction to it in our own lives. Following two novels, Cumberland and Progress (Cormorant Books) and two books of poetry What You Can’t Have (Signature Editions) and Body of Text…

How to build story and adventure with Instagram

December 18, 2015

General News, Members Blog

by Jennifer Kingsley, @meetthenorth Instagram is big, it’s growing, and it’s an opportunity for us nonfiction types. Yes, there’s a bad reality show component, but don’t be fooled. There is fine documentary there too, and we can be a part of it. Instagram made me nervous at first. I saw it, like other social media, as a proliferation of social obligations—without the benefit of leaving the house. A friend convinced me to give it a try; she said it would…

Writing by your own rules

September 24, 2015

Members Blog

As a child I wrote stories in booklets made of scrap paper haphazardly stapled together, a combination of words with crayon illustrations that made for a colourful—if not entirely comprehensible—storyline. By the time I was ten I fancied myself a journalist, pounding out short news articles on my dad’s old typewriter, covering the big events of my childhood: the crash of the space shuttle Challenger, or the malfunction of West Edmonton Mall’s Mindbender roller coaster. Writing came easily, and it…