Member milestones

Member milestones

The Federation of BC Writers is home to a variety of tenacious and dedicated writers whose accomplishments range from publishing short stories, books, articles, and poems to hitting their word counts, winning writing contests, and more. In these pages, we celebrate the successes of our BC and Yukon writing community. These are just a few of the incredible milestones our members have reached lately:

Teresa Hedley’s memoir, What’s Not Allowed? A Family Journey with Autism, is an accepted submission for the Governor General’s Literary Award, 2021. What’s Not Allowed? was reviewed by Terrance James in BCBookLook’s “Living with autism.”

Margot Fedoruk not only completed her creative writing degree after her children left the nest but also finished her first book, Cooking Tips for Desperate Fishwives: An Island Memoir. It has been Fedoruk’s lifelong dream to write a book.

DK Eve won several awards this year: first prize for both the 2021 Island Short Fiction & Word on the Lake contests; second place in the North Shore Writers Association contest; and the Vancouver Island Regional Library’s first Poem in Your Pocket contest.

Arianna Dagnino published, in Italian, Il Quintetto d’Istanbul (Ensemble 2021), a literary account of what it means to be writing in transcultural and bilingual modes. She will be on a book tour in major Italian cities.

Pauline Le Bel’s poem, “The Chestnut Agreement,” about her finding a mate for a lonely old chestnut tree on Bowen Island, is now a highly amusing and somewhat informative YouTube video.

Dreaming big in a small Kootenay village, novice author Susan Dunnigan pursued the dream of narrating her memoir. Raw and real, Warrior Angel: Beyond Disability: A Family’s Quest for Ordinary is now an audiobook, read by the author.

Sanjana Karthik had her work read out loud by the mayor of White Rock for National Poetry Month. This was something she was able to accomplish last year as well, and she received an honorarium.

Valerie Fletcher Adolph’s pandemic goal was to publish a trilogy of light-hearted historical mysteries to lighten the spirits of readers. Set in post-WWII England, the novels follow an intriguing cast of unique characters.

In July 2020, Salmon Arm writer Kevin Gooden challenged himself to write a micro-fiction story on Twitter daily for one year, using the #vss365 word prompt. He did—reaching over a dozen countries—and was read over 100,000 times.

S.E. Saunders recently published her first novel, Houston in September, on Kindle Direct Publishing after lengthy rewrites and edits. She looks forward to working on the remaining eleven books in the series.

Barbara Robin is happy to report that she is regaining her love of writing following the loss of her beloved partner, Elroy, who died of cancer in November 2020. She is quoted as saying, “Writing about him has been my solace.”

As a short story writer, KT Wagner has learned to soften the sting of rejections by making it a goal to receive at least one hundred of them annually. She is well on track to achieve this goal in 2021 with sixty-four rejections (and three story sales!).

Naomi Beth Wakan just celebrated her 90th birthday with the publication of Wind on the Heath (Shanti Arts 2020), celebrating sixty years of her poetry writing.

After “Work in (Endless) Progress” was published in FBCW, Marie-Claude Arnott got two endorsements for her memoir and created a website. She is also working on a new book proposal and posting on her Facebook Page, The Writing Keys.

Ashleigh Rajala’s short story, “The Palm Reader,” a contemporary fabulist piece published by the Tatterhood Review, was nominated for the 2021 Best of the Net Anthology.

Margaret Growcott has just had her first novel published. It is a fictionalized history of her grandmother, who was born in 1872 in England. At age ten, Margaret’s grandmother worked in a cotton mill in the mornings and went to school in the afternoon.

Claire Finlayson served on the board of directors of the Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts for ten years. On August 15th she will be presenting her own book, Dispatches from Ray’s Planet: A Journey through Autism, on her “home” stage.

Ann Berens published her first non-fiction book in 2020, a shortened version of a family history she compiled from handwritten memoirs and letters which were written by her father, who was an oil geologist in the early 1900s.

Would you like to see your own literary feats celebrated in the pages of WordWorks? Visit bcwriters.ca/milestones.