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Katie Bickell

Katie Bickell

Author, Instructor, Manuscript Consultant

About to deliver the convocation keynote at my alma mater, Northern Lakes College, 2021

Hi, I’m Katie!

I immigrated to Canada with my family when I was five years old. We moved straight from northern England to northern Alberta, where I would spend the rest of my childhood with my sister and brother. We lived on an acreage outside of Slave Lake, surrounded by poplar and pine. With a typewriter I received as a Christmas gift, I set up a writer’s studio in a treehouse. I wrote Anne of Green Gables fan fiction and my father copied and mailed the stories to himself to protect his eldest daughter’s work.

During a March snowstorm three weeks after my eighteenth birthday, I sank three vehicles at the end of my driveway: my car, my dad’s tractor, and my dad’s quad. A young man who lived down the gravel road came to my rescue. He dug me out and then resumed his position atop his snowmobile, ready to return home. I interrupted his departure with a kiss and married him five years later.

Freddy + Katie, 2006
Peace, 1998

If you grew up as a college-bound female in a small town in the late nineties and early 2000s, it was likely you were presented with one of two career options: girls who were good at science or math were told to go into nursing, and girls with talent in English or social studies were encouraged to become elementary school teachers. I fell into the second camp and started my studies through a university transfer program at a local trade school, Northern Lakes College, in 2004. Because Slave Lake was experiencing an oil boom at that time, workers were in short supply. The mere fact that I was enrolled in college classes qualified me to fulfill multiple vacant jobs I had no business working – including working as a preschool teacher, a grade one teacher, a daycare worker, a behavioral therapist, and a family crisis resource worker.

Helping families and children in need presented a crash education in the systematic injustices faced by impoverished people in our province. This knowledge would later inspire much of the content in Always Brave, Sometimes Kind, which I consider both a love letter and plea to my province. However, the most important thing to come from my college-era working days was my parents’ adoption of two of my daycare kids (twins). That’s a long and magical story in itself, but won’t be shared here out of privacy for my youngest sister and brother.

My first car, a Dodge Spirit, provided inspiration for Amy’s in Always Brave, Sometimes Kind, 2002
My youngest brother and I, about a year before uttering the words that terrify all parents: “Mom, Dad, I’ve transferred into an English Arts Degree.”
(Soon to follow: “Mom, Dad, I’m pregnant.”)

Shortly after the twins’ adoption, I graduated with a diploma in the arts. I was accepted into the University of Alberta’s Elementary Education program but, as September neared, I knew I was off-course. Literature was my calling. I withdrew from the program and registered for the English Degree program through Athabasca University.

I spent the next year studying through distance learning, reading literature and writing essays in Freddy’s drafty spare room. It was one of the most private, solitary, and intellectually richest periods of my life. Then, ten months before graduation, I became so ill I could barely read my textbooks. I was pregnant.

Pregnancy meant I had to return to the workforce or forgo maternity leave after the baby was born. I withdrew from my courses and started applying for work. My last university assignment was an essay entitled “The Joy of Being Kicked” in which I explored both the reasons why I had chosen to continue my unexpected pregnancy, and the guilt I felt over my ambivalence towards impending motherhood.

And then, I put down my pen.

The best writing partner I ever had, 2016
Ready, set, go. 2008

A couple of weeks after learning we were going to have a baby, Freddy received a job offer at a Firehall just outside of Edmonton. We moved to Sherwood Park and prepared to become parents. At the ages of 22 and 25, we invited our parents, siblings, and grandparents on two-week notice and married in the empty living room of the home we’d raise our family in. I found work as an Early Childhood Development Resource Worker until the baby’s due date.

Our daughter Cailena was born in January during a chinook that changed the season from deep winter to early spring during our two-day hospital stay. Two years later, while pregnant with her little sister, I received an email from a parenting site encouraging its subscribers to submit essays to a writing contest. On a whim, I submitted my old essay, “The Joy of Being Kicked.” It won and provided the catalyst I needed to begin writing again.

When I shared this first publication with friends on Facebook, people asked if I would help with their writing needs. Grant applications were needed for nonprofits, and folks wanted professional resumes. Through this opportunity, I built a writing business while caring for my children. After my youngest daughter’s Halloween birth, I was most likely to be found rocking Chloe to sleep while typing into a computer with one hand.

Peace was short-lived, however, as two tragedies happened in short succession. My best friend’s husband died two months before their first child was born, and a wildfire burned through a third of our hometown. Following these events, I wrote two children’s books: the first, Sunbeams, was self-published and sold as a fundraiser for my friend and unborn nephew. The second, Hope is in Our Hands, was commissioned, published, and distributed by The Slave Lake Regional Firefighter’s Society.

Signing copies of Sunbeams and Hope is in Our Hands, Slave Lake, 2011
Our family, 2018
In the thick of it, 2014

After Sunbeams and Hope is in Our Hands, I wrote in sips, approaching the page whenever my babies or business would allow the escape. It was an incredibly creative time. I learned what literary journals were and I received a few flash fiction credits in places like Postcard Shorts, Edgar Allen Poe Journal, and Bare Fiction Magazine. I also discovered my local library’s Writer in Residence program. On Valentine’s Day, 2014, just a few weeks before I turned 26, I met with Strathcona County WiR, Margaret Macpherson.

It was Margaret who pulled me out of isolation into a craft and a community. Her manuscript consultations brought my work and skill to a level I hadn’t been able to achieve through self-study. Within weeks of working with the author (who would become a lifelong friend), I received publication for longer fiction pieces in journals like Tahoma Literary Review, Avenue Magazine, and HERizons Magazine. Soon after, these short stories would go on to win the 2014 Alberta Views Magazine Fiction Contest, the Alberta Literary Award’s 2015 Howard O’Hagan Award, and the 2017 Writer’s Guild of Alberta’s Emerging Writer Award.

Alberta Literary Awards, 2015
At the end (or first turn?) of a long road, 2020

These drafts would provide the foundational basis for Always Brave, Sometimes Kind, a novel-told-in-short-stories. In 2018, I received an individual arts grant from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts that allowed me to drop my business writing for a year while I drafted its manuscript in full. The book was published by Brindle & Glass (a subsidiary of Touchwood Editions) in September 2020, mere months after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

While it was frustrating to launch a book into a world temporarily without libraries and bookstores, the book was well-received. Always Brave, Sometimes Kind was awarded the 2021 Alberta Literary Award’s Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction, the 2021 Indie Project Award for Alberta, and was shortlisted for the 2021 ReLit Award for Novel. In lieu of meeting readers at book parties, signings, and readings, I developed Book Club Freebies and workshops and instead met students and book clubbers through a computer screen. Instructing workshops turned into a regular part of my work, and I was soon asked to begin critiquing manuscripts for emerging writers as well, which also developed into a service I regularly provide through a new writing business, Always Brave Creative.

Aside from teaching, critiquing manuscripts, and writing resumes, I spent 2021 penning a ghostwritten book for a client who wished to preserve his memoirs.

In 2022, I received creative grants from both the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the Canada Council of the Arts, allowing me again to write for my own readers. So, happily and with much gratitude, I continue to write. Alskling is a novel of magical realism – a romantic ghost story of sorts. The book is set on the same dirt road where Freddy and I grew up and explores the history of Lesser Slave Lake and Grouard, as well as traditional land stewardship practices. But, mostly, the book argues for our responsibility to share our individual gifts with one another and our planet so that we might both honor the past while making space for the future.

Nowhere else I’d rather be.

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I’ve told you a little (okay, maybe a lot?) about me, now it’s your turn! Use the contact form to introduce yourself, or find me on Facebook.

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    What’s Going on With Me

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

    September 13, 2021

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

    August 6, 2021

    Meet the 2021 Alberta Literary Awards Finalists

    May 2, 2021

    Celebrating ABSK’s ReLit Awards Shortlist

    May 2, 2021

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    Visit me on instagram!

    katiebickell
    In March I shook off my pandemic funk. A trip to C In March I shook off my pandemic funk. A trip to Cuba brought me back to life and I made an intention to harness the energy. This morning I met my goal, five months in the making.

I wanted to feel strong again. I have a very vivid memory of the best I’ve ever felt: in this memory, I am 26. At this time I was still nursing my youngest daughter, and training for a half marathon. It was an unremarkable day, but, in this memory, I am running and the sun is at my back. I can see my shadow in front of me, and I can feel the way my ponytail swings behind me. I’m on Cloverbar road, just in front of the firehall. What I can’t feel are my legs: I’ve just crossed 7K and my mind has turned off from that part of my body. They’re doing their work but from my perspective, I just feel like I’m flying.

In March, I realized how badly I wanted to go back there to that moment of freedom - or at least try to. Although I’ve been a daily long distance walker for years, I didn’t know if I could still run and hadn’t tried but for a kilometre or so about once a year (usually around my New Years resolutions lol). Worst, this time last year I partially tore my Achilles’ tendon, an injury that had me on crutches and sunk any confidence I had in my physical strength.

But this time I took myself seriously. I started a “Dream Big, Start Small” program on the @runkeeper app, and then signed onto the #trainwithrunkeeper #myfirst10k program once it had completed. Today I finished the program and ran for a full hour - something I haven’t achieved in the last decade! 

It’s been a hard won win: tendon pain, plantar fasciitis, then knee pain, and now piriformis pain I’m treating with massage and yoga. A spring and summer of ice packs, Tylenol, wraps, and liquid glucosamine and turmeric gummies. But today I made it to that moment: full freedom, flying.

Not a full 10K (yet), but the end of the Runkeeper program, and 60 minutes running: no stop, finishing strong ❤️
    Maybe some luck is coming this way 🍀 Maybe some luck is coming this way 🍀
    Chloe’s first soccer game ⚽️ For those of yo Chloe’s first soccer game ⚽️ For those of you without preteens at home, this look means “stop embarrassing me, Mom.” 

Just kidding, all the looks mean that.
    For all the truth about how hard mean girl dynamic For all the truth about how hard mean girl dynamics can be (and are) at their age, the best part of being a girl is having that one girl beside you. #girlhood #thisisten #besties
    20yrs old: “I sleep in my contact lenses all the 20yrs old: “I sleep in my contact lenses all the time! Just doesn’t affect me! Weird right?”
36yrs old: “I looked at my computer screen for 15 minutes before remembering to switch into glasses and now I can’t blink.” 
#sandpapereyes #amwriting #blindasabat
    #spring2020 #stillsnowing #april2020 #alberta #sto #spring2020 #stillsnowing #april2020 #alberta #stopsnowing #amwriting
    🎶I want a home with a crowded table, and place 🎶I want a home with a crowded table, and place by the fire for everyone 🎶 

Forgot to take photos of our “home with a crowded table” during a beautiful Easter dinner, but so loved stretching the holiday out over three days dyeing #pysanky with @lisasana, @liv.nich, Brynn, Caily, and Chloe. We used various teas along with beet powder and turmeric to make dye on Friday night and drew with the wax from tea light candles on Saturday and every night girls ran to and from our homes under the warm weekend’s full moon. The kids had such fun blowing the eggs that (thank goodness) we moms didn’t have to 😂 

#easterphotodump #eastereggs #pinkmoon #springsnow #homemadedye #easter2022 #crowdedtable #plantyourgarden #romantisizeyourlife
    Instagram post 17957270350683206 Instagram post 17957270350683206
    A surprise gift from my 10 year old niece 🐣🌸 A surprise gift from my 10 year old niece 🐣🌸💞 @lisasana you make pretty sweet kids 🥰
    Woke at 3am and couldn’t get back to sleep. Reor Woke at 3am and couldn’t get back to sleep. Reorganized the living room as quietly as possible instead. Willow managed to sleep through it 🐾
    I like my hair’s natural texture, but I don’t I like my hair’s natural texture, but I don’t give it enough love. Usually I straighten or blow dry or curl it away before I have to do anything “professional” or “in public” or “normal” but the kids and I call it my witchy hair and when it’s like this I feel most me. Tonight I’m teaching a writing class and students will develop plots as wild as my waves. Death to styling tools (at least today anyway).
    It is -12 degrees Celsius, and flurries in the nig It is -12 degrees Celsius, and flurries in the night left snow on the ground. But F’s tomato seedlings have sprouted so, you know, hang in there… 🌱 ❄️ 🍅 🌸
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