The Writer's Studio Reading Series (May 2012)

Our creative writing program, The Writer’s Studio, hosts a popular monthly reading series featuring local and out-of-town writers and authors. These mixed-genre readings are open to the public.

Readers List

PAT BUCKNA (TWS 2003, 2009) lives in Powell River. He takes photos, builds websites, composes songs, and spends far too much time drinking coffee and looking out at the ocean. At night, he's often awakened by the grumblings of a memoir that lies in bits on a spinning hard drive.

DHANA MUSIL is working on a series of short stories chronicling her decade spent living in Japan’s underbelly. One of those stories placed first for non- fiction in the 2011 North Shore Writers Competition. Dhana hopes her writing will one day land her in a place of perpetual sunshine.

25-year-old ALEX WINSTANLEY lives in Vancouver, Canada, where he has earned a BA in literature from the University of British Columbia. Alex loves the light of the sun, and the light in people's eyes. He has self-published a few sun-kissed books and is looking to expand his career as a poet.

MADELAINE STANDING began writing in 2006 when the sentences poured forth on the seaside of Croatia’s quiet island of Hvar. After living in metropolitan cities around North America she's now taken root in the bustling, environmentally friendly city of Vancouver. Keep an eye out for Madelaine's adventure novels Heaven In The Meat Packing District and Jail or Garden.

BRUCE LEIGHTON (TWS 2010) grew up among the vegetable gardens and chicken coops of East Vancouver. An interest in “wee beasties” brought him to study at SFU, where he is currently an associate member of the Biology Department. He is currently working on a fiction novel about an investigative entomologist.

JOAN BOXALL is a Vancouverite and UBC grad who has taught in Cranbrook, North Delta, Vancouver, and North Vancouver, her present home. She is a TESL instructor who worked with immigrant newcomers to Canada, and has been a member of a local performance ensemble, Pandora’s Vox, for 22 years. She’s now writing and vocalizing on her own. www.joanboxall.com

KEVIN SPENST'S poetry has appeared in Prairie Fire, Contemporary Verse 2, Rhubarb Magazine, Capilano Review, Dandelion, Filling Station, Poetry is Dead, The Maynard, The Enpipe Line, and V6A. In 2011, he won the Lush Triumphant Award for Poetry for a suite of poems from Ignite.

Guest Artist

CLAUDIA CORNWALL, an award-winning freelance writer for over 20 years, has published over 100 magazine articles and four books. The most recent, was At the World’s Edge: Curt Lang’s Vancouver, 1937-1998. She recently received a $20,000 journalism award which led to a fifth book project, Catching Cancer, which will come out later this year. Claudia grew up in Vancouver and studied philosophy at UBC and the University of Calgary. She teaches in SFU Continuing Studies.