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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
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
🎶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
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… 🌱 ❄️ 🍅 🌸
My husband and I own a tiny ancient cabin just off My husband and I own a tiny ancient cabin just off the shores Lesser Slave Lake. At the age of 22, he bought it off his great-grandparents, Lena & Fred (RIP), just a few months before he met me, and who’s to say they don’t visit us still? The cabin is two doors down and across the road from the house I grew up in and the house next door to that one, where my father now lives. A three minute bike ride takes us to Freddy’s grandparent’s home (Wayne and Marcella), and to his mom and dad (Gale and Fred), who live next door to them.

In this cabin, Freddy and I sleep behind a curtain that hangs in the middle of the living room. When he’s not here, Chloe shares my bed. Cailena was conceived in the same bedroom she now fills with art. In the spring, we fall asleep listening to the squeaks of little things between the walls and I make a mental note to bring the cat next time. In the summer we throw open all the windows and doors and seek coolness beneath poplar trees, although in last year’s heat wave the kids and the dog found most comfort with wet blankets on the cool, hard, uneven floor under their beds. There is only space for a fridge in the utility room, which is connected to the bathroom, so you have to knock on the door before grabbing the milk.

This cabin was our first love nest, and now that it’s no longer fit to rent out, it is ours to warm again with children and space heaters and hot water bottles and hand knit blankets (me) and stitched quilts (Gale and Marcella, and some of Lena’s, too). Candles and incense mask the faint smell of the skunk that feuded with Willow and lost the battle but won the war. We decorate the place with antiques unearthed in the outbuildings, and mud new cracks in the walls and ceiling each May. 

This little space, chock-a-block with love and memories and ghosts and stains of what once was - a place where past/present/future feels to collide all at once - is one of my favourite places in the world, and is the setting of my next book, “Alskling,” a romantic, folkloric story that has so far proven to be my favourite tale to pen. I hope these photos show you not just a simple space, but the affection we have for it.
Oh hello, Julia Cameron. I keep hearing it’s pas Oh hello, Julia Cameron. I keep hearing it’s past time we met.
Great question from a @pandemicuniversity “Less Great question from a @pandemicuniversity “Less is More” Student: the difference between Perspective and Point of View. Here’s my condensed-for-instagram answer:

Perspective is the #voice that tells a story. The protagonist is tied to decisions the #author makes around language, symbols, and imagery when writing through their perspective. If your protag is a 5yr old and you are writing from his perspective, your word choices are limited to his experiences. If the protag sees something that is “sophisticated,” the author won’t be able to use that word unless the reader is given a believable reason why the child knows it. Instead, the author might describe the sophisticated thing as “fancy,” or “really grown up” to keep the childish perspective.

Usually stories are written in the perspective of the protag. This allows the reader to connect immediately, as they hear the voice throughout the whole #text. In a short story, this is important as each word should not only provide story details but deepen character development.

Sometimes a story is told from a different perspective. Perhaps the protag is a 5yr old, but the story is told through the perspective of the child’s adult self. Then, the author can use details that the narrator would have access to but the protag would not. An example that comes to mind is the film “A Christmas Story.” The protag is a child, but the perspective belongs to his adult self. Because the adult-self narrates, lines like “faster than a jackrabbit on a date” are appropriate even though the protag wouldn’t know what they meant. 

A story’s perspective can also belong to a secondary #character. In “The Great Gatsby,” the protag is Gatsby but the #story is told through Carroway. Word choices and opinions reflect Carroway’s character – not Gatsby’s.

A story can also be told through a godlike perspective who might sound like the collective voice of society (See: “Pride and Prejudice,” “The Lottery”) or an objective witness who reports without opinion (“Hills Like White Elephants”). 

(Point of view continued in comments)
Starting the day off pink: tulips and a rose incen Starting the day off pink: tulips and a rose incense cone. #sweetstart #rose #tulips #spring #flowers #sunshine #incense #simplepleasures #morningvibes
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