Events & Workshops

Note: This will be uploaded to Facebook and a captioned video will be uploaded to YouTube following the event.

First Draft: Conversations on Writing is an online talk series that dives into themes that affect our writing lives. Writing helps us to understand things and to communicate these findings to our audience, even if our audience is ourselves. Sometimes we are driven by these themes, other times they’re the things that hold us back – what we learn through the process can be revolutionary. The quest to be understood unifies all writers.

This event features a 15-minute talk presented by Adam Pottle around the theme of writing about violence, that is, how to maintain balance in the text and empathize with the characters. Following the talk is an interview conversation to dig deeper into the theme, hosted and moderated by Joanne (J.C.) Paulson.

Participants are welcome to submit questions in advance of the event to swgevents@skwriter.com.

Register to receive the Zoom link, or watch via Facebook live: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_jRrGWhlMQPGjozmk4aUhcg

"On Writing and Violence: Confronting the Horror with Empathy"
**TRIGGER WARNING**: This talk will touch on difficult subjects, including eugenics, discrimination, racism, and psychopathy.

This talk explores how writers present violence in literature and how violence functions in different genres and from different narrative perspectives. Referencing works as varied as Hansel and Gretel, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Beloved, Night, "A Far Cry from Africa," The Wasp Factory, and Angel Wing Splash Pattern, it considers a question:

What is the line between narrative truth and gratuitous violence? How might an author decide where that line lies? How do we as writers ensure that the violence on the page is readable?

Presenter

Adam Pottle's writing spans multiple genres. His works include the musical The Black Drum, the memoir Voice, the novella The Bus, and the novel Mantis Dreams. The Black Drum was the world's first all-Deaf musical and was performed in Toronto and France. His writing has won or been nominated for several awards; Mantis Dreams won the 2014 Saskatoon Book Award, and his short story "The Rottweiler" was nominated for a 2020 National Magazine Award. He lives in Saskatoon.

Host and Interviewer

Joanne (J.C.) Paulson, a long-time Saskatoon journalist, has been published in newspapers including The StarPhoenix, The Western Producer, the Saskatoon Express and a variety of magazines.

Her unquiet brain requested a shift from fact to fiction four years ago, when she started writing mystery novels based in Saskatchewan. Four have been independently published: Adam’s Witness, Broken Through, Fire Lake and Griffin’s Cure. She is presently completing a historical fiction novel entitled Blood and Dust.

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