Registration for this year’s Surrey International Writers’ Conference opened Wednesday, June 7, at noon local time.
Both virtual and in-person attendees can learn how to be better writers during the 2023 “hybrid” event, planned in October at the annual gathering place, Sheraton Vancouver Guildford Hotel.
Master classes will kick off the conference from Oct. 18-19, followed by “the most comprehensive professional development conference of its kind in Canada,” from Oct. 20-22.
Registration is online at siwc.ca with a wide range of price and package options, starting at $79 and peaking at $799.
“If you’re a writer of any kind of fiction, memoir, poetry, or non-fiction who wants to grow in your writing career, SiWC has something for you,” writes Kathy Chung, conference co-ordinator, in a newsletter. “Whether you’re a beginner who’s just started to write or a seasoned pro, this year’s conference is for YOU.”
New this year, virtual attendees can register for half-hour, small-group virtual “kaffeeklatsches” (casual group chats about all things writing) with a presenter, along with “blue pencil” appointment opportunities.
For all registrants, “networking opportunities abound in our virtual bar, the hotel bar, and at banquet meals for full-conference attendees,” Chung notes.
Last year the Sheraton hotel was a beehive of authors, budding writers and books after two years of online-only conferences during the COVID-19 pandemic. The SiWC website includes a 16-minute video celebration of the 30th event in 2022.
SiWC 30th from Martin Chung on Vimeo.
The conference was launched in the early 1990s by founder Ed Griffin, a writer, former priest and social worker. He’d attended a writers conference in Seattle and believed Surrey could easily support such an event, first held here at Johnston Heights Secondary before a move to the Sheraton in 1994.
Griffin taught prisoners the craft of writing in Matsqui, and at the Surrey conference met and befriended novelist Diana Gabaldon, a fellow American known for the “Outlander” series. For years Griffin persuaded Gabaldon to join him in the prison classroom while in Surrey, right up until his death in 2015, at age 78, and Gabaldon continued that work.
For three decades Gabaldon has been an ardent supporter of the annual writers’ conference in Surrey, all while witnessing the continuing popularity of her fantasy-romance “Outlander” books and the TV series that followed.
In a phone call last October, Gabaldon reflected on three decades of the Surrey conference.
“I was not here for the first year of the conference, but I’ve been here every year thereafter, I think,” she recalled.
“It’s the overall atmosphere, extremely convivial,” Gabaldon continued. “The atmosphere is designed to be extremely supportive and also to provide a lot of opportunity for interaction among the people who attend as well as the presenters and so forth. It’s very egalitarian, and you’ll meet everyone in the elevators going up and down. This hotel is particularly conducive to that as well.”
tom.zillich@surreynowleader.com
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