When Words Collide 2021

Save the dates this August 13 through 15 2021 for When Words Collide (WWC) the annual Canadian literary festival based in Calgary, AB. This popular event for fiction readers, writers, artists, and publishers is open for registration.

As with last year’s online event, WWC 2021 will be both online-only and FREE to attend with most panels and workshops taking place via Zoom. WWC is an inclusive event with programming covering a broad range of commercial and literary fiction, poetry, and more.

WWC has grown to become one of Canada’s largest literary events and is now celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2021.

Learn more about WWC at: whenwordscollide.org/About_WWC

Register to attend this year’s virtual conference here: whenwordscollide.org/Registration

Renaissance Virtual Conference Oct 24-25

Join over 20 speculative fiction authors from across Canada for a two-day virtual writers’ conference October 24 & 25, 2020. Panelists include SF Canada members Su J. Sokol, Nina Munteanu, Elizabeth Hirst, and Cait Gordon.

Panel discussions cover setting, world building, writing inclusively, and much more. Participants will also enjoy a virtual dealers room with a broad range of books.

Register at on the Renaissance Press website and head over to the event on Facebook to follow updates.

News from Colleen Anderson

SF Canada member Colleen Anderson has had several bits of good news lately.

She has been selected as Guest of Honour at The Creative Ink Festival speculative fiction convention in Burnaby, BC in March, 2020. The Creative Ink Festival is a three-day event full of inspiring panels, presentations and workshops. Designed to be inclusive for all levels of writing, the festival is a chance for writers to have the opportunity to chat with industry insiders in a relaxed and supportive environment. Readers have the chance to meet their favourite authors and find out about the authorial process.

Colleen also had two new publications, with twinned stories appearing recently in Thrilling Words Spectulative Fiction Publishing. “Nautilus” is free to read on the Thrilling Words website. “Heartstrings”, a second story in the same setting, is available to supporting members.

Colleen is a three-time Aurora Award finalist and was longlisted for the Stoker Award in fiction. She placed in the Balticon, Rannu, Wax and Crucible poetry competitions and has performed her work before audiences in the US, UK and Canada. Colleen has been a poetry and fiction online editor, slush editor for Chizine, and also co-edited Canadian anthologies Playground of Lost Toys (Aurora nominated) and Tesseracts 17, and her solo anthology Alice Unbound: Beyond Wonderland, was published in 2018. A Body of Work was recently published by Black Shuck Books, UK. Some of her work is in nEvermore!, Beauty of Death, Shoreline of Infinity, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, OnSpec, Polu Texni, The Future Fire, and Cemetery Dance.

Colleen has a BFA in Creative Writing and has received grants from the BC Arts Council and the Canada Council for writing. The Horror Writers Association granted her a partial scholarship to attend Stokercon in 2019. She is working on several collections of poetry, a couple of novels, and marketing more anthology ideas. Once in a while she still does freelance copyediting, and used to copyedit for New York publishers and companies. Her blog about writing and life can be found at www.colleenanderson.wordpress.com, and she sometimes invites guest authors to write about their works as well.

Launching “Of Tempests and Teacups “

SF Canada member Rebecca Diem recently launched the fourth and final book in her Tales of the Captain Duke series, Of Tempests and Teacups. Rebecca will be attending Ad Astra this coming weekend and celebrating the book’s launch at 6 p.m. on Saturday, July 14, in Room 1086 at the convention hotel, the Sheraton Parkway North.

About the book:

Stop the Tradists. Save the Captain Duke.

When the Captain Duke goes missing, Clara takes the helm to face enemies old and new. Torn between desire and duty, she must use her skills as both pirate and debutante to unite her allies and save the day.

Even if it means facing her greatest fears—and returning to where it all began.

Find out more about the series on Rebecca’s website.

“Bear #178” wins in True North conference

SFC member Holly Schofield’s latest story stems from reading about a famous grizzly bear around Banff known as Bear 148. The grizzly was in and out of various news stories after several close encounters with humans. As this article says: When grizzlies mix too freely with people, the grizzlies usually lose.

According to Bill Hunt, a Parks Canada resource conservation manager, this particular bear “…showed a very moderated response…tolerating less than ideal human behaviours time and time again.”

Despite this, she didn’t last long. Bear 148 was shot and killed by a hunter in 2017 when she wandered outside park boundaries. She was one of the last few bears legally killed before British Columbia ended grizzly trophy hunting last November.

As we hurtle toward a tech-driven future, we need to figure out how to be better stewards of our little blue planet. That was the impetus for Communitech ‘s True North conference last week. This international conference focused on issues at the intersection of society and technology, as a force for good in the world. Part of the initiative was a story contest to highlight that worthy endeavor. “Bear #178” was Holly’s winning entry.