Writers Workshops Montreal

Writers’ Workshops Montreal are designed to help you find your voice and create a space for creative expression. We offer writing workshops in all styles and levels of expertise, whether you’re an experienced writer or just starting out.

Poet Larissa Andrusyshyn cites curiosity and an urgency for truth as common ground between poetry and science. Presented by the Atwater Writers’ Exhibition and generously supported by the Community Cultural Action Fund of the Department of Canadian Heritage.

Generative Writing Workshop

Writing workshops are more than just sitting down and typing away. They’re an opportunity to explore your creativity in a group setting and ignite your natural curiosity. This workshop uses generative prompts and activities to inspire writers of all levels. This is a great way to get your juices flowing and overcome writer’s block.

Join interdisciplinary artist Naima Kristel Phillips for this day-long creative lab on the art of generative writing. Through writing exercises and prompts, participants will be guided in a world-building process to nurture their creative energy and generate materials for personal projects. This workshop is FREE, but space is limited.

Poonam Dhir is a queer poet, playwright, editor and storyteller born in Tiohtia:ke (Montreal). Her work contemplates themes of identity, trauma, memory and the relationship between belief and belonging. She is on the editorial boards of Vallum and Carte Blanche literary magazines and was a 2021 PEN Canada New Voices award finalist.

Creative Non-Fiction Workshop

In this workshop, students use approachable and familiar creative prompts to generate writing about their lives. This course is led by poet and teacher Larissa Andrusyshyn. She also teaches for non-profits and leads community arts activities.

This class builds on the introductory workshop by advancing an understanding of and application of the elements of fiction: structure, character, POV etc. It combines study of published texts alongside engagement with targeted in-class exercises that aid story development. Students will also critique their peers’ fiction and gain editorial insights.

Author of the linked story collection We Have Never Lived on Earth, Kasia Van Schaik is a writer, editor and educator. Her work is rooted in feminist and anti-racist principles and community-building approaches. It has appeared in the LA Review of Books, CBC Books and Maisonneuve Magazine. She is currently a CBC QWF writer-in-residence.

Creative Writing Workshop for Seniors

This workshop offers participants a space and process to write their personal essays. An introductory class that is open to all ages and skill levels, the personal essay combines techniques from fiction and nonfiction writing to create an engaging narrative of an experience or event that has changed you in some way.

Ev Ricky is an artist, writer, and cultural worker based in Tio’tia:ke (Montreal). Their art, poetry, and writing practice centres around speculative text-image relations, embodiment, and access intimacies.

This is a two-part workshop led by poet Larissa Andrusyshyn. Through writing exercises, this workshop explores the common ground between poetry and science – curiosity and an urgency for truth.

Writing Workshop for Children

Being a capable writer is crucial for children to become successful adults. They will need to write summaries, reports, critiques, and essays for work. But they will also need to write in their daily lives (e.g., letters to friends and family) and in their leisure time (e.g., retellings of their experiences). Writing Workshop helps children learn to take their own writing seriously and develop the confidence to share it with others.

Each Writing Workshop session begins with a mini-lesson, during which you explicitly teach a particular writing skill or strategy. Your understanding of children’s needs, your curriculum scope and sequence, and formative assessment data will help you identify the primary literacy objective for each mini-lesson.

During work time, children independently develop pieces of writing, sharing their finished work in conferences with the teacher and with each other. This conference process is crucial to the success of Writing Workshop as it enables students to reflect on their own writing and provide a vehicle for receiving feedback from peers and teachers.

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