McLoughlin Gardens Winter Programs

Launch Your Writing Project! A six-week online class
Get That Novel, Family History, or Memoir Started This Winter

Have you got a story idea that needs fleshing out? Would you like some impetus and structure to get your project underway? Join author Jeanette Taylor and storyteller Margo McLoughlin for a six-week online series, running from 1 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Saturday afternoons, February 3 - March 9.

Taylor and McLoughlin will help writers with a new story idea devise a plan and get started on their project, whether it’s short fiction, writing for children, or a novel. We'll engage in discussions and try writing exercises designed to get your pen movng as you work toward a first draft. Each participant will receive personal instructor feedback on at least one writing submission.

Lifelike characters who face difficulties are at the core of successful narratives, and those challenges are best portrayed in scenes. When a character steps onto the stage, something must happen to engage readers’ curiosity and empathy. We’ll delve into the difference between scenes and narrative summary; and test ways to inject personality and life into your writing.

The goal of this series is to get your project launched as you hone and revise passages within a supportive group of peers.

Participants must have a story idea in mind and write a 200 to 300-word synopsis in advance of the first session (using guidelines provided). They must enjoy writing and be curious about developing new skills required for fiction and creative nonfiction.

Time: Saturdays, 1:00 to 3:30 p.m. 

Dates: February 3, 10, 17, 24, March 2 and 9, 2024 

Location: Online

Fee: $295 + GST

A few testimonials from past course participants:

I was about to give up and you've made me believe again. You two are the equivalent of EVSE stations for cars: drive up, plug in, recharge, carry on. You care, you share, you dare (us). You live and breathe and showcase your passion for writing, great examples, great mentors. I owe you guys my writing soul. Allen P. (Comox, BC)

The workshop was wonderful from beginning to end. Thank you so much, Jeanette and Margo! Lisa P., (Campbell River, BC)

The workshop was a wonderful experience for me!  As a beginner I felt challenged and supported by both Jeanette and Margo. I learned from my peers too and enjoyed the group.  Pat W. (Victoria, BC)

To register, visit our Calendar page and complete the form.

Jeanette Taylor is the author of several books of local history, including most recently, Sheltering in the Backrush: A History of Twin Islands, (Harbour Publishing, 2023). She is a sought-after editor and instructor and has been teaching in-person and online classes for writers at all levels for many years. Margo McLoughlin is a storyteller and writer, now based in the Comox Valley. Her short fiction, non-fiction, and translations have appeared in a number of publications, including Parabola Magazine. She holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College.

Summer 2020 Events at the McLoughlin Gardens

Public reading with Marcus Youssef

“Creative Differences: Art, Adaptation & the Reinvention of the World” took place on Thursday, September 3rd at 4:30 p.m. in Puntledge Park.

Marcus’ plays are entertaining, surprising, edgy and often satirical. Every single one tackles an urgent political and social question, from climate change to migration and racialization to militarism to the corrosive personal consequences of capitalism to his unique, ten-year writing collaboration with Niall McNeil, a Vancouver-based artist whose life includes Down’s Syndrome. These plays are some of Canada’s most incisive examples of how an artist’s work can disrupt our thinking about urgent social questions in ways that are unexpected, full of humour, and – most of all – authentically human.

Marcus Youssef, our 2020 writer-in-residence

When asked what projects he would be working on while he was at the McLoughlin Gardens, Marcus gave the response one might expect from a wildly creative individual, with his projects and plans neatly lined up as a numbered list:

1 - writing (and hopefully some continued research with folks in the Valley) for my new play about Canadian refugee sponsors, tentatively titled Our Refugees. This is being developed by Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre and my first draft will be read there in September. 

2 - early stages writing a stage adaptation of Brave New World, influenced by Shoshona Zuboff’s extraordinary book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, which I’m developing with my long-time collaborator, musician Veda Hille.

3 - Rewrites on my play for teenagers about Islamophobia and the white working class, The In-Between, for a United States tour by Montreal’s Geordie Productions in 2021.

4 - Rewrites on my play Incognito Mode, about what it means to members of Gen Z to have grown up as the first generation to have pornography fully embedded in their lives, through the internet. It tours Canadian universities in 2021 as well. 

and hopefully some walks on the beach ;-)

Marcus will be joined in residence by his partner of 30 years, teacher and scholar Amanda Fritzlan. Amanda is in her fourth year of a PhD in Education and Curriculum Theory at UBC, and will be writing the final stages of her dissertation. Amanda’s research examines relationships between a historically colonizing education system and non-western (primarily Indigenous) systems of knowledge in math and science. 

Marcus Youssef’s fifteen or so plays, about half written in collaboration with pals, include Winners and Losers, Leftovers, King Arthur’s Night, Jabber, The In-Between, Ali & Ali and the aXes of Evil, Everyone, Adrift, Peter Panties, and A Line in the Sand. They have been produced across North America, off-Broadway and in Britain, Ireland, Iceland, Greece, Germany, China, Denmark, Belgium, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands. Marcus’s work has received numerous awards, including one of Canada’s most prestigious cultural awards, the $100,000 Siminovitch Prize for Theatre, the Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award, Berlin Germany’s Ikarus Prize, the Rio-Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award, the Chalmer's Canadian Play Award, the Seattle Times Footlight Award, two Arts Club Silver Commissions, the Vancouver Critics’ Choice award (three times), the Canada Council Staunch-Lynton Award for artistic excellence, as well as multiple local awards in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. Marcus Youssef’s plays are published by Talonbooks and Playwrights Canada Press. A co-founder of the Vancouver-based artist-run production studio Progress Lab 1422, Marcus is currently Senior Artist at Vancouver’s Neworld Theatre (which he led from 2005-19), International Associate Artist at Farnham Maltings (UK), Playwright in Residence at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre, an artistic advisor to the National Arts Centre English Theatre and an editorial advisor to Canadian Theatre Review. 

Maleea Acker, 2019 writer-in-residence

The McLoughlin Gardens Society welcomed our third writer-in-residence in the summer of 2019.

Maleea Acker is the author of two books of poems, The Reflecting Pool and Air-Proof Green (Pedlar 2009, 2013), and one of essays, Gardens Aflame: Garry Oak Meadows of BC’s South Coast (New Star Books, 2012). Her work has been published in Canada, the US, Mexico and the UK. She writes an environmental column for Focus Magazine and serves on The Malahat Review’s non-fiction editorial board.

Maleea has lived and worked in Canada, the US, Spain and Mexico. She is also an award-winning Geography lecturer at the University of Victoria, where she is a PhD candidate, focusing on Geopoetics.

During her residency, Maleea gave two workshops, both of which challenged participants to think differently about their relationship to the landscape.

Arleen Paré, 2018 writer-in-residence

In August, the McLoughlin Gardens Society welcomed Victoria poet Arleen Paré as our 2018 writer-in-residence. During her residency, Arleen met with local writers to discuss their work. She also gave a one-day workshop on the topic of “The Habit of Art” and one afternoon at the Courtenay Library, she read from her poetry and prose collections.

An Interview with Arleen Paré

MGS: What project were you working on while in residence at the McLoughlin Gardens?

Arleen: While I lived at McLoughlin Gardens last August, for which I am entirely grateful, I worked steadily on a new project that I am currently calling First. This is a book-length collection of poetry that tracks my relationship with my first best friend though childhood into the fifty years I lost track of her altogether, and then into finding her again just down the street. The collection also includes questions about the origins of the cosmos, and Nancy Drew. I was fortunate enough to have the digital inspiration of Toronto poet and teacher Hoa Nuygen, who provided a poetry course based on the writings of Gertrude Stein and Emily Dickenson. This course was a poetic challenge for me, a new way to write poetry, and I loved it. I was able to add over fifteen poems to this new collection.

 MGS: What was your writing routine while you were staying at the cottage?

Arleen: I avoid routine in my writing life like the plague (how’s that for a cliché?). I love to have routine in my daily life, but not in writing, that would make it too much like work. I don’t think of writing as work. I worked for decades in government bureaucracy, which was routine and discipline enough for at least three lifetimes. Now I write whenever I can, which is easy enough because I love writing almost as much as I love my children. I am a devoted writer; I take enormous pleasure from writing. Nothing about writing is work for me.

When I wrote at the McLoughlin Gardens, which was constant but sporadic, I perched on a kitchen chair at the little wooden table in the main floor bedroom. I moved the table so that it stood beside the large wardrobe with the figure of Mercury painted on the door. A beauty. I didn’t look out a window, though the views were exquisite. I looked into the south-facing wall, which was white. I used two cushions on the chair. Sometimes I used notes from the night before when I would have woken up with a poem bumping around in my head. 

 MGS: What did you learn from meeting with local writers to discuss their work?

Arleen: I loved working with the local writers. They were most delightful, curious, kind, and generous in their approach to me. They listened carefully and asked good questions. What I learned from them and from working with such a diverse collection of writers was the beauty of the individual writer, how each writer has their own way of expression and of learning, how important it is to respect that. 

MGS: What tips would you give someone who is setting up a writing retreat at home?

Arleen: Set the retreat for a defined period of time, for a weekend or for a week. Clear the decks, both socially and physically. Tidy up a bit. Load your printer with paper. Make sure you have access to a good dictionary, a good thesaurus, any research books you may need or want. Eat simply. Keep a notebook by your bed.

MGS: Thank you!

 Past residencies

Nova Scotia poet and writer, Anne Simpson, arrived in the spring of 2016 to be our first writer-in-residence. Winner of the Griffin Prize in poetry, as well as several other literary awards, Anne met with local writers at the library in Courtenay to offer consultation on their work. She also gave an evening class in poetry and two fiction workshops. 

Local writers and poets expressed their appreciation for Anne's presence:

Poetry

"Anne [was] exceptionally generous with her time and programming. Not every writer in residence would offer an array of courses and private meetings. We were very lucky to have Anne, and I hope she will come back, also to Hornby Island.  Good luck in your deliberations for a new writer in residence, and my sincere thanks to the McLoughlin Foundation." Cornelia Hoogland

Fiction

"[At Anne's fiction workshop] I learned how to get right to the action of the story so as to avoid too much preamble. I also learned that my real experiences are far more unique and interesting than I supposed and that I just have to provide enough background so that the reader understands what is actually happening in the story, context, environment, characters.

One amazing thing is that it was free and to be able to learn from a professional writer free of charge is quite a boon. Anne’s style of teaching I found a great combination of hands on, covering essential information yet being spontaneous enough to elicit valuable information from the participants. At the same time she was disciplined about keeping us on point." C. R. Wells, workshop participantIn

                                    Envelope of Summer

Anne Simpson
 

Shiny-backed crow, pecking in gravel,

rose-tinted peony, the bride’s skirts, 

turtle in the culvert, crooked elbow in the trunk

of the young beech. Elderberry, bedecked

with scarlet, with Chinese ornaments. Rolled up

fields across the estuary, tide over rock, once, twice, and again

the single grey heron, a monk observing

fish glimmer in eelgrass. Dignitaries, 

on perches of dead spruce, scan the crowd. A yellow-gold

gaze, far-seeing. Poplars turn silver-backed leaves, turn them

this way and that. A robin’s query. An onshore breeze

puckers the tablecloth of water. Here, the guests, 

having gathered, having

settled. Faint scent of bayberry. The robin

again. A hush—