by Michele LeTourneau
Northern News Services
2001
The year
in Review
Writers need more than words to survive
Writer Anita Daher arrived from Saskatchewan in 1999, but not before searching out the writing community in Yellowknife. As a board member of the Saskatchewan Writer's Guild, Daher knew the importance of a writing community to her work and to her life as a writer.
She feels strongly that sharing information and offering support improves a writer's work. She read Yellowknifer, saw an advertisement for the Yellowknife Writers Group and promptly joined upon her arrival.
She brought up the idea of a territorial association and it was discussed "as something that might be interesting." In January 2001 Daher took the real plunge. She sent an e-mail out to the 30 or so writers in her address book.
"Who's interested in a writers conference?" she asked. "Oh, and send this on to every writer you know."
Daher then banded with Rosemary Cairns and Doris McCann. They planned and executed a weekend-long conference in early summer. They posed the question there: anyone interested in a territorial writers association?
"There was and so we formed," says Daher. "We had 30 members."
The guest speaker, author Fred Stenson, a founding member of the Writers Guild of Alberta, informed them that when his provincial association formed, they started out with 25 members. That was cause for elation. Daher was elected president.
She took on the task of contacting other writers' organizations and publishing houses, announcing the birth of the new TWA, announcing to the rest of Canada that Yellowknife and the NWT have quality writers. She became a funnel for information, back and forth, because as hungry for information as were local writers, the rest of Canada also wants them. Daher is excited.
"There's going to be work coming out of here," she says.
Daher and her family moved to Ontario recently, but her replacement in the presidential position is confident that now the ball's rolling, it isn't about to stop.
"Ask any member if their writing has improved in the last few months, and they'll say yes," says the new president, Peter Hagar.
Plans for 2002 include another weekend-long workshop June 14 to 16, "with a festival aspect." TWA wants to pull in other groups, such as the local chapter of Storytellers of Canada.
The TWA holds memberships with the Aurora Arts Society, Storytellers of Canada, the NWT Literacy Council and the NWT Children's Literature Roundtable.
"We have memberships so that we can cement connections, share re-sources and share opportunities with our writers," says Daher.
"We want to make sure we're not duplicating things and we want to share in the volunteer workload."
Reaching rural writers
Bigger plans are afoot. So far, there are only two members from outside Yellowknife.
"One of the things is that we finally want to get a sense of how big the writing community in the NWT really is. We seem to have captured the Yellowknife writers to a reasonable extent. But there are aboriginal writers and writers from other communities who we want to link up with," says Hagar.
Hagar will attend a national conference for writers in 2002, where one of the big issues is how to reach rural writers. From the conference he hopes to gain a better understanding of what has worked and what hasn't.
Daher reiterates that "a lot of people down there (Southern Canada) are anxiously awaiting what we can send them. Realistically, Northern writing is an untapped resource."
In 2001, TWA accomplished its top three goals: publish a newsletter, organize a workshop and stage social events such as public readings. With that kind of track record, 2002 looks bright.