Events & Workshops

At the Heart of it All: The Role of Community in a Writing Life

Jenna Butler and Courtney Bates-Hardy share an honest chat about some of the many ways in which writing communities provide support and advice to authors sending their work into the world. From celebrating success and navigating rejection to lifting one another up via writing groups and professional service, community is at the core of a long writing life.

To register for this online event, please visit https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_tGU3eSqXSPuP_GAKiNbEgw

About this 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 Dr. Jenna Butler. Following the talk is an interview conversation with Courtney Bates-Hardy to dig deeper into the event theme.

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

Please be mindful of your time zone as all times listed are Saskatchewan time. Find your time zone here: https://dateful.com/time-zone-converter

Accessibility measures in this event:

• Live auto-captions through Zoom during the live event
• (TBD) A read-along copy of the presenter's talk is available during the live event only
• Presenter self-descriptions
• This event will be recorded, captioned, and made available for 30 days (until March 5, 2026) on the SWG YouTube channel following the event: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRAIIcrpQW0NcY6ZM0GGSzw
• Transcript of the event is available upon request for 30 days (until March 5, 2026)

Presenter

Dr. Jenna Butler (she/her) is a queer BIPOC poet, teacher, and editor. She is the author of six collections of poetry and essays. Revery: A Year of Bees, essays about beekeeping, climate grief, and trauma recovery, was a finalist for the 2021 Governor General’s Literary Award and was longlisted for CBC Canada Reads. A professor of creative and environmental writing, Butler teaches for Sage Hill Writing and the University of Victoria. She works on the land between a collaborative off-grid organic farm in northern Treaty 6 and the unceded traditional territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən and W̱SÁNEĆ peoples.

Host

Courtney Bates-Hardy is the author of Anatomical Venus (Radiant Press, 2024), shortlisted for two Saskatchewan Book Awards, and House of Mystery (2016), nominated for an Elgin Award. Her poems have been featured in The Best Canadian Poetry and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She won the City of Regina Writing Award in 2025 for her manuscript-in-progress, We Want to Live Like Trees. She is queer and neurodivergent, and one-quarter of a writing group called The Pain Poets.

Funding provided by:

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