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Katie Bickell

Katie Bickell

Author, Instructor, Manuscript Consultant

Always Brave, Sometimes Kind

Warm and Gritty, Well-Defined and Utterly Complicated.

Winner of the 2021 Indie Project Award for Alberta.

Winner of the 2021 Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction.

Shortlisted for the 2021 ReLit Award for Novel.

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Author, Instructor, Manuscript Consultant

Katie Bickell


Katie Bickell is the author of Always Brave, Sometimes Kind.

Always Brave, Sometimes Kind earned the 2021 Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction, and was shortlisted for the 2021 ReLit Award for Novel. Earlier versions of the novel’s chapters received the Alberta Literary Award’s Howard O’Hagan for Short Story, The Writer’s Guild of Alberta’s Emerging Writer Award, and The Alberta Views Fiction Prize.

Katie lives in Sherwood Park, Alberta, with her husband and daughters, where she is currently penning her second novel, Alskling. Katie frequently teaches creative writing courses and offers manuscript consultation to emerging writers.

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Don’t worry, I won’t blow up your inbox (I’m far too disorganized to send mail that consistently). But if you’d like to receive the odd love letter when I’m feeling sentimental or be in the know when I’m offering new courses, consider signing up. Of course, those on the email list will be the first to know when Askling is launched (well, after the messy but loveable folks I live with, anyway).

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Manuscript Consultation

Bring your story to its strongest draft.

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Workshops and Courses

Develop your craft with group instruction.

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    Latest from the Blog

    Upcoming Course “From Crafting to Completion: A Short Story Intensive”

    While there is no one way to write a short story, there are ways to make its creation a thing of beauty and creative fulfilment. And whether you are just diving into short story writing,…

    Continue Reading Upcoming Course “From Crafting to Completion: A Short Story Intensive”

    Work with Katie in the Alexandra Writers’ Centre Society 2021/22 Author Development Program

    Meet the 2021 Alberta Literary Awards Finalists

    Celebrating ABSK’s ReLit Awards Shortlist

    More on the blog

    With Many Thanks

    I acknowledge the support of both the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and The Canada Council for the Arts.

    Membership

    I am proud to be a member in good standing with the  Writers’ Guild of Alberta and The Writer’s Union of Canada

    katiebickell

    Visit me on instagram!

    katiebickell
    My daughter’s bedroom is a greenhouse. Not reall My daughter’s bedroom is a greenhouse. Not really. Really, it’s the smallest, darkest room in our home, chosen by her when she was ten years old because, prior to her moving out of the bedroom she shared with her sister, it was my office - a place where she’d meet me at 6am to play a game of chess, or where she’d work on homework in later afternoons across the desk from where I wrote. Before that, she’d spend hours at my feet in her bouncy chair in that room, when she was a newborn baby and I was a newborn writer. It is the same room where, on the second day of her life, her father forgot her wrapped up “taco baby” style on the room’s guest bed, when I called him up for dinner and away from his task of uploading photos of her to Facebook for friends and family members to see. 

“Where’s the baby?” 
*confused look before realization* “oh shit!”

But now the room is her secret garden, with plants in every corner and on every surface. Kept alive with grow lights and a small humidifier, she collects and curates like a botanist. So, we were thrilled this weekend that she invited the rest of us into her interest when she researched and organized a family trip to Devon’s Botanical Gardens. She introduced us to exotic and native plants, and pointed out their many special features that I can’t recall but enjoyed hearing her tell me about.

An amazing thing about a child growing into their own world is the way it expands your own. As she and her sister take up their own interests and hobbies and specialities, we sometimes have the privilege of invitation. Then, we no longer experience things we know through their eyes, but things they know through ours. The days of parenting a teen often feel fleeting and sometimes it’s a little sad to feel her taking each step away from me. But then, just look at what she’s waking toward 🌱
    Soaking up the fall coziness during a manuscript c Soaking up the fall coziness during a manuscript critique 🍁 

A few months ago I started making my initial consult notes on printed copies instead of digital and I’m never going back. It’s a little more expense (ink & paper) and a little more time (after penning notes in margins, I input them into comments on digital copies to be delivered to the client following our manuscript meeting), but the feeling of pen on paper and the opportunity to leave my desk is so worth it. It’s all about the little thing and I’m a big believer in romanticizing life.

This is a bit of a joke I tell my students in a class I teach on overcoming writer’s block. In that lecture, I ask students to think of the last time someone “romanticized writing” to them. It happens all the time - you tell someone you’re a writer and they tell you their fantasies about it: how if they were you, they’d write in dark pubs like Hemingway, or in moleskins on the bus while people watching, or by candle light at midnight. For many of us who write to pay our bills, these fantasies can kinda make us cringe because we live the far less glamorous reality of writing to stringent deadlines or hating our early drafts so much we can barely read them or working in the midst of domestic chaos because there was one option - clean or write - so you end up working with laundry piled on one side of you and dirty dishes on the other.

But, when motivation is gone… well, for me the best thing to do is sink into a fantasy. If writing in a pub or on a bus or in a fresh moleskin or by candle light is enough to bring back a millisecond of the magic, it might be just enough to break out of a funk. I’ll take it, always ✨

#manuscriptcritique #editor #editing #writersblock #romantisizeyourlife #writing #shortstory #cozy
    Register for free by calling Strathcona County Lib Register for free by calling Strathcona County Library, or schedule a one-on-one appointment with me to write your resume (also a free service! Isn’t our library fab?!). Other available free services include interview coaching, online job application, and contract negotiation skills. See you soon!

#interviewskills #acingtheinterview #sherwoodpark #sherwoodparkevents #sherwoodparklocal #jobsearch #resumes #work #strathconacounty #careercoaching
    Instagram post 18027737371568892 Instagram post 18027737371568892
    See you in the morning? #resume #newjob #jobsearch See you in the morning? #resume #newjob #jobsearch #resumetutor #resumewriting #work #careercoach #strathconacounty #sherwoodpark
    Summer Photo Dump - backyard hammock hangouts - bi Summer Photo Dump
- backyard hammock hangouts
- bike rides
- boating with mom and Wes 
- a visit from overseas
- Barbie movie ‘fits
- the kids learning how to turn their feet into washing machines during a muddy vacation with no washer 
- rainy day fishing
- beach days
    September photo dump:
- Parent’s night at Chloe’s junior high (that kid’s dad!😍)
- our 10 foot sunflower (new Bickell record)
- First day of school at two new schools: high school and junior high
- How’d ya like them apples?
- the start of kitchen renos 
- a little office love ❤️ Manuscript consultation work between resume clients
    Firmly in the keeping-my-daughter-company-during-h Firmly in the keeping-my-daughter-company-during-her-boyfriend’s-football-game stage of life. #HiInstaItsBeenAWhile #fall2023 #septembervibes🍁
    Chloe: you’re not good at making hair look good, Chloe: you’re not good at making hair look good, but I knew you’d be able to make it look crazy.

You got me, kid. That’s the specialty.✨ 

#holidayhairday #whovillechristmas
    Celebrating F’s 41st trip around the sun with ch Celebrating F’s 41st trip around the sun with cheesecake and candlelight. Happy birthday, Honey🎂 We love you so much ❤️
    Instagram post 18224925259084495 Instagram post 18224925259084495
    Halloween 2022 It’s a bittersweet holiday this y Halloween 2022
It’s a bittersweet holiday this year. This is the first Halloween Chloe decided not to celebrate her birthday and instead go out with friends, and the first year Caily decided to host a horror movie marathon instead of trick and treating. After a decade of Halloween birthdays, it was just Freddy and I making do with a date night at Blowers and Grafton. But how lucky were we that we had that 10 year surprise tradition, Honey? 🧡🎃 still no one I’d rather the spookiest night of the year with.

(Still dressed up as The Witch of Appleton Crescent though, ‘cause, I mean, is it even a costume anymore?)
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