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Katie Bickell

Katie Bickell

Author, Instructor, Manuscript Consultant

Events

Katie here: I’m always up for teaching a workshop, visiting a book club, or speaking as part of a panel or interview. If you’re interested in having me join your next event, please use the form to contact me. Otherwise, maybe I’ll see you at one of the events listed below!

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Packing a Punch: Big Stories in Small Spaces

Hosted by the Writers Guild of Alberta Conference & AGM

Sunday May 30, 2021

Learn how to craft powerful narratives in as few words as possible from an award-winning short story writer. Working from a collective prompt, students will workshop a piece of flash fiction into a succinct-but-rich tale using a variety of tools. Students can expect to leave the course with a polished piece of flash fiction, as well as a list of flash fiction markets open to submissions. This class includes both crafting and editing a new micro-story in real time.

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Packing a Punch: Big Stories in Small Spaces

Presented by the Alexandra Writers’ Centre Society

January 14, 2021, 6-9pm

Learn how to craft powerful narratives in as few words as possible from an award-winning short story writer. Working from a collective prompt, students will workshop a piece of flash fiction into a succinct-but-rich tale using a variety of tools. Students can expect to leave the course with a polished piece of flash fiction, as well as a list of flash fiction markets open to submissions. This class includes both crafting and editing a new micro-story in real time.

This is an interactive online class using the Zoom web platform.

MEMBER PRICE: $45 | NON-MEMBER PRICE: $60

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Book Club Visit

November 18, 2020, 8pm, Slave Lake Library (via Zoom)

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Strathcona County’s Fall Feast of Words: Always Brave, Sometimes Kind (A Conversation & Reading)

Tuesday Oct 27, 2020, 7-8:30pm

“Words teach, entertain, provoke thought, provide insight and help to give our lives meaning. Through Fall Feast of Words, the Strathcona County Library celebrates the importance of the written word and brings it to life by hosting a series of authors in conversation.”

Click the image below to register with library services.


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Alberta Culture Days Writer’s Workshop (via Zoom)

September 26, 2020, at Spruce Grove Library, 12-2pm


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WGA Event: Writing and Alcohol

Audreys Books (10702 Jasper Ave)

Wednesday, March 4, 2020, 7pm

Literary culture and alcohol culture have crossed paths so many times over the years that a lot of the time it seems like they parallel to each other. The mystique of the drunken writer, the tortured genius, Irish whiskey branded “Writers’ Tears”, and figures that loom large in our collective psyches like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Carver, and so many others. Being a writer in the 21st century has more pitfalls and temptations, but there is also more information and knowledge available to us as well. How can the literary community be more supportive of our fellow writers who are in recovery? Do we need to adjust how we approach readings and networking events? What other options exist for people who are looking for more alcohol-free events for any reason?

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Emergency Workers Mental Health Symposium

Tuesday, January 22, 2019. 6pm.

McLab Center, Leduc Alberta

This free event open to all emergency workers. Our speakers will share on mental health recovery, post-traumatic growth, and the mental health resources they have developed that are available to first responders and their families. Join us at the McLab Centre in Leduc to hear about some of the resources available to us here in the Edmonton area or get some ideas that you can implement for your own service. A special thank you to the Leduc City Fire Services for sponsoring this event.

Speaker topics:
Post Traumatic Growth – Daniel Sundahl, Paramedic/Firefighter & Artist

A.S.K. All Services Kinship – Mike Skinner, Paramedic/Firefighter

Alberta Critical Incident Provincial Network – Jeff Sych, M.Sc., R.Psych.

Legacy Place Society – Diana Festejo

Re-integration – Sergeant Glen Klose, Edmonton Police Service

Strathcona Firefighter Paramedic Spouses Association – Katie Bickell and Elliott Davis

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A Place for Prose Literary Salon

Saturday, November 7, 2018. 7pm.

I think that the place that moved me most was to travel to the far west of China to see where the Great Wall actually crumbles into sand in the desert. I think that was the place that left the biggest imprint on me. This barrier, this idea of the wall that had lasted so long and this idea of the fear of the barbarian or the outsider, whatever it was going to be, this wall that you can see from outer space, and to see where it simply dwindles into desert and how you just walk around that end. And it’s like straw and mud and brick or clay. It gives you perspective. – Madeleine Thein

History seems to move between times of building walls and times of building bridges. Or maybe it has always been a mix of the two, just one has more emphasis now and again. At A Place for Prose, we believe that art (which we’ll define quickly and broadly as any created form, image, story, music, drama, or dance that moves people to be more human) will outlive anything made of clay and straw or barbed wire and easily crosses any border. Our next house salon features four women whose writing and painting give some much needed perspective on our times:  

  • Edmonton artist, Barbara Hartmann
  • Edmonton YA fiction writer, Caroline van Rooyen
  • Albertan fiction writer, Katie Bickell
  • Edmonton travel memoirist, Leilei Chen

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An Afternoon with the Authors

Sunday, May 28, 2017. 2pm

Audreys Books

Please join us on May 28 for An Afternoon With the Authors. This annual event allows us to partner with our friends at Audreys Books to feature readings by writers whose work is shortlisted for the Alberta Literary Awards. It’s always a full house when writers, readers, family, and friends gather to celebrate these authors and hear them read from their work. Refreshments will be served and books will be available for sale and signing.

Readings by: Thomas Wharton • Omar Mouallem • Rona Altrows • Sydney Sharpe and Don Braid • Laurie MacFayden • Lisa J. Lawrence • Mary Graham • Nora Gould • Austen Lee • Vern Thiessen • Alison Hughes • Katie Bickell

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An Afternoon with the Authors

Sunday, May 3, 2015. 2 pm.

Audreys Books, Edmonton, AB

The Writers’ Guild of Alberta and Audreys Books present a special opportunity to meet finalists for the 2015 Alberta Literary Awards, featuring readings by:

Katie Bickell
Jennifer Delisle
Susan Hagan
Bobbi Junior
Sarah Lang
Victor Lethbridge
Conni Massing
Wendy McGrath
Rudy Wiebe

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Glass Door Coffeehouse Reading Series

The Mill Woods Artists Collective presents
MAY 2014 GLASS DOOR COFFEE HOUSE READING
Thursday, May 29, 7-9pm
Koffee Cafe, 6120 28 Ave NW, Edmonton

Host Robin Young welcomes headliners including authors Caterina Edwards, Fran Kimmel, and Katie Bickell plus singer-songwriter Olivia Rose.

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
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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 ❤️
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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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