CWILL’s beloved and long-time member, Irene Watts, passed away on November 21, 2023, at the age of 92 years old. As an educator, dramatist, and writer, she was an important voice in Canadian’s children’s literature.
Irene was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1931. When she was a child, her grandfather gave her a puppet theatre, a gift that she credits for sparking her creative life. At the age of seven, she went to England on the Kindertransport to escape Nazi Germany. She immigrated to Canada in 1968 with her husband and children.
In Canada, Irene became a teacher and worked in theatre for young audiences, writing and directing plays that were performed in schools across the country. She was the director of the Citadel on Wheels/Wings and started the Neptune Theatre touring company in Halifax. She was the first program director of the Vancouver International Children’s Festival and worked with Green Thumb Players and Arts Umbrella in Vancouver.
Irene was the authors of several books for children, accumulating many awards and honours. Her books are translated into multiple languages.
She was a fiery spirit and a strong voice among the CWILL membership. She will be missed.
Bibliography:
Seeking Refuge, 2016, Tradewind Books
Touched By Fire, 2013, Tundra Books
Escape From Berlin, 2013, Tundra Books
No Moon, 2010, Tundra Books
No Pets Allowed, 2010, Tradewind Books
Munsch At Play, theatrical plays based on the stories of Robert Munsch, Annick Press, 2010
Clay Man, the Golem of Prague, 2009, Tundra Books
Good-bye, Marianne, The Graphic Novel, 2008, Tundra Books
When the Bough Breaks, 2007, Tundra Books
Flower, 2005, Tundra Books
Tapestry of Hope, compiled with Lillian Boraks-Nemetz, 2003, Tundra Books
BC author Danielle S. Marcotte will be reading from her new book, Blue Camas, Blue Camas, at Black Bond books on Sunday, November 19th at 1pm in Ladner. All are welcome!
The first thirty customers who purchase the book will receive a free copy of Danielle’s previous book, This Airplane Can Dance!
Claire Lordon is launching her new graphic novel memoir One in a Million. Her medical misfortunes may be one in a million in this relatable memoir, but so is her determination, grit, and passion to beat the odds and reclaim her life.
Join Claire at:
Iron Dog Books 2371 East Hastings Street Vancouver
The Children’s Writers & Illustrators of BC are excited to partner with our friends at Word Vancouver to offer tons of family-friendly offerings this year!
We welcome kids, teens, families, lovers of kid-lit of all ages, students and young/emerging writers and artists to connect, learn, celebrate, and read local with us this fall at Word Vancouver Festival of Readers & Writers.
Join 35+ local authors & illustrators across TWO(+) days for THREE kinds of kid-lit fun:
Festival Programming: author & illustrator presentations, panels, performances & more!
Drop-In Fun: local authors & illustrators leading storytimes with activities and crafts while you wait for your next festival event to start!
Book Sales & Giveaways: buy books by BC kid-lit creators, get them signed and personalized, enter to win our bookish giveaway, pick up free bookmarks & more at the CWILL table & beyond!
We’re excited to meet you both Saturdays at the:
Main Festival: Sep. 16 at UBC Robson Square (beside Vancouver Art Gallery)
Bonus Kids’ Day: Sep. 23 at Surrey City Centre Library (10350 University Dr, Surrey)
Sep. 16 (Vancouver) Festival Programming for Kids:
The amazing folks at WORD Vancouver Festival have put together dozens of panels, presentations, stage performances and more—we highly encourage you to check out the whole program here—but we’ve also highlighted just the kidlit-focused programming with CWILLers (starred) below!
Here’s a handy list of CWILLers on the program in order (with a couple bonus items that didn’t fit above!)
10:30-11:30 am: Main Stage / author event for kids & families with music! feat. Leslie Gentile
10:45-11:45 am: Sunroom / picture book chat for kids & families with Kuljinder Kaur Brar, Emily Seo moderating
10:00-11:00 am: Room C400 / adult/all-ages panel on nonfic for kids with Anuradha Rao & Megan Clendenan, Mark Leiran-Young
12:00-1:00 pm: Sunroom / interactive picture book chat for kids & families with Julie Puech
1:15-2:15 pm: Main Stage / Zoe Si, Kathleen Gross, Lee Edward Födi, Nancy Vo with Claire Lordon
2:30-3:30 pm: Sunroom / author chat for tweens & teens with Susin Nielsen, K.A. Wiggins moderating
4:00-5:00 pm: Sunroom / author chat for teens with Emily Pohl Weary & more
BONUS: 11:30-12:30 on Sep. 23 at Surrey City Centre Library / picture book chat for kids & families with Mahtab Narsimhan, Kirsten Pendreigh moderating & more
Many of these events have additional guests beyond the CWILLers listed, with Surrey having a particularly illustrious lineup, so do check the full programs on the festival site.
Reminder—all programming is free! As are our drop-in activities!
There will be THREE places to find books by BC authors and illustrators (& get them signed/personalized!) on September 16th in Vancouver—the festival bookseller, the CWILL table, and a special event highlighted below.
But while you’re at the CWILL table (in the sunroom/kids’ areas on both weekends), don’t forget to ENTER OUR BOOKISH GIVEAWAY and pick up free bookmarks while you’re there!
NEW this year, the festival decided to help storytellers whose book launches suffered during the first two years of the pandemic by hosting a special feature throughout the day in the HSBC Hall on the lower level.
CWILLers taking part are starred below. The hour they will be on site to sign/personalize books is marked in blue, and they will also be doing short readings/pop-up talks at that time.
Please come out and give these fantastic and deserving books and authors/illustrators some extra love!
Finally, our friends at the festival would like us to highlight that they have a wonderful silent auction running:
Special thanks to the BC Museums Association for the opportunity to connect with their members and share ideas, inspiration, and opportunities for collaborating with BC children’s authors and illustrators on June 7!
(We were also incredibly impressed with their well-organized professional development and continuing education resources for their members and webinar mastery—a true inspiration!)
Looking for ways to serve and engage kids and families more deeply, frequently, and creatively? This fast-paced and engaging webinar will explore several of the (many) opportunities to team up with the thriving BC KidLit community and will introduce the free resources provided by the Children’s Writers & Illustrators of British Columbia Society to help you find local books and storytellers to collaborate with your institution.
As mentioned in the replay, you can also browse just the slides at leisure and/or download our quick-reference sheet below:
Here’s the next in our series of profiles on CWILL members:
Hi, Kaie! Please give us your quick bio.
I write speculative fiction for kids, teens, and adults/all-ages that’s (so far) either eerie, funny, or both at once—and mostly set in BC.
I like to take on new challenges, so I’m always hopping between (or mashing up) genres, writing in different formats and lengths, and publishing for different audiences. It’s chaotic, but it works for me (and I never get bored!)
Lately I’ve been having a lot of fun with the weird and wonderful possibilities of short fiction (readers tend to throw things at you if you get too experimental in novel-length works…)
But I do a lot of publishing-adjacent work as well—leading CWILL BC and championing children’s literacy and BC authors and illustrators and their books, serving on the board of directors with Word Vancouver Festival of Readers and Writers, and teaching with the Creative Writing for Children Society.
It turns out I’m part of that fraction of the population that isn’t scared of public speaking (or I’ve just learned to productively harness terror-fuelled adrenaline) and I love sharing what I’ve learned, so it all works out!
How long have you been a member of CWILL BC? I joined CWILL in 2019 after being invited to speak at a children’s literature festival in Mumbai. I had so much fun, I figured why not look for ways to get more connected with the children’s literature community back home?
But since I’m not really a “joiner” by nature, the only way I could think of to make being a member worthwhile was to start volunteering (so I’d be forced to talk to people and show up at events!) The board was looking for a Treasurer at the time, so I’ve been a director basically since the start.
Then, since there was no VP in line for president at the time the last president was ready to step down, I got an unexpected promotion in 2021. It’s been an interesting (and busy!) time getting to know CWILL and the wider BC arts community while keeping all the balls in the air, but I’m proud to be part of such a fantastic group of people and excited to help our members and their books connect with more readers.
Tell us a little about yourself. What led you to writing and/or illustrating for children? Was it a lifelong passion? Something you discovered later on in life? I was instantly obsessed with reading (to a probably unhealthy level), read young and above my grade level, and probably should have known earlier that I was going to become an author by the way I narrated absolutely everything to myself (silently!), made up urban legends at school and for my younger siblings, and would put myself to sleep by imagining self-insert adventures from whatever book had last captured my attention.
I had a fantastic teacher in middle school who really helped me see myself as a writer, and that was when I started working on novels and submitting stories to competitions. I had big dreams heading out of high school that got buried by the grind of putting myself through university and kind of accidentally building a corporate marketing and business analysis career in Vancouver (it paid the bills . . .)
But, having gotten started early on that career, by my later 20s I was already bumping into the glass ceiling. Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately, from their perspective), my family sat me down and asked me what I wanted to do before I bruised myself much further. That really brought me up short—and put me back on track with a goal I’d had since middle school, but hadn’t felt like I had permission to pursue.
As far as the writing for children part, I really enjoy upper MG/teen through YA books and that’s always been what I gravitated toward (maybe it’s a natural flair for angst—and/or humour?), so if anything, writing for adults is something that I’m still discovering the ins and outs of.
Tell us about your latest publication. Technically, my last publication was “Children of Earth” in Fantasy Magazine (Issue 90/April 2023.) It was longlisted in the 2023 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, took an Honourable Mention in the 2022 Writers of the Future Awards, and is my first piece available as an audiobook, so I’m quite proud of it. But while it’s fairly kid-safe, it’s technically adult/all-ages.
In children’s publishing, I’ve been wrapping up the Threads of Dreams “climate apocalypse + monsters in dystopian Vancouver” gothic YA Fantasy series. The main (novelette) trilogy was released from 2018-2021, but there have been several short stories, novelettes, and a novella, and I just did a spinoff micro-trilogy of novelettes from a side character’s perspective called Spectres of the Old World in January-February 2023 that hops between post-apocalyptic Powell River and Vancouver.
I’m actually presenting on the subject of apocalyptic, dystopian, and utopian futures in children’s & YA literature and how they illustrate better possibilities, expose and bring catharsis to current realities, and confront trauma in June at the University of British Columbia Masters of Children’s Literature (Re)Imagining Tomorrow: Agency and Possibility in Literature and Media for Children and Young Adults Conference, so I’ll be drawing heavily on lessons learned, excerpts, and research materials from that series in my presentation.
What are you currently working on? Anything you can share with us?
I always have lots (too much?) on the go, so my current (accidental) obsession is a high fantasy about grass-haired people at war with the mossfolk, which is pushing back the launch of my next series, a murder mystery-meets-urban fantasy with rockstars, fae, and a Supernatural-esque monster-fighting road trip across the Pacific Northwest/BC inspired by Thomas the Rhymer, Tam Lin, Cainsville, and Ragged & Gallow. But both of those projects are looking like adult or new adult releases.
In kidlit, I have an upper MG/junior history-hopping teen ghost story set in Chilliwack waiting for some love, but it’s so hard to carve out the time! My first (YA) series was set roughly 100 years in the future of BC, so it was fun to take little glimpses into the last 100 years for some of the scenes. Although, the fascinating yet tough thing about history is it also shows the seeds of so many of today’s problems. But I had a good time balancing out heavier themes with humour in a way that is a little harder to do in upper teen and adult/all ages writing. The skeleton dog has been a definite hit with my first readers! Here’s hoping I find time and the right place to share this lightly spooky contemporary paranormal tale soon.
Do you do school or library visits? Tell us a little bit about what teachers, librarians, and kids can expect during one of your visits.
Teaching, speaking, and running workshops is something I never expected to fall in love with, but it turns out to be one of my favourite parts of being an author. I’ve developed my own curriculum and taught camps and term-length intensive workshops, as well as being a guest speaker for various institutions, so I have a wealth of material to draw on, spanning genres (fantasy, sci-fi, horror, etc.) and writing/publishing/storytelling topics.
Fun workshops or presentations that can be adapted for multiple grade levels (up to and including adult!) include “ghosts of the past” (exploring local history by injecting fun or frightening creative additions), “monsters and magic” (spooky or magical, based on preference), or “dreaming the future” (climate fiction, STEM/eco, utopias, dystopias & apocalypse stories) I bring a great deal of enthusiasm, respect, and encouragement to my presentations, which range widely depending on the age, size, and interests of any given group.
In general, I like to share what I’ve learned and help young readers and emerging writers grow their skills and tell their own stories, rather than focusing too much on an “author reading” from my own books. I particularly enjoy working with teens, including the ones who aren’t strong or confident readers or writers, and love using story structure and genre topics to engage them in creativity without the pressure of “homework” and having to actually muddle through the writing part dampening their story inspiration. I find treating attendees with warmth, enthusiasm, and respect unlocks creativity in all ages, levels of academic achievement, and attitudes.
Schools, libraries, festivals, etc. interested in learning more and/or discussing their needs can check out my speaker’s profiles on CWILL BC and The Writers Union of Canada, or on my website.
Tell us a fun or interesting fact about yourself.
I was deeply into music as a kid, and I’ve had to make the tough choice between focusing on becoming a “rockstar” (more likely, music teacher) or “writer” at a few points over the years. Only so much time to pursue impossible dreams in one day! I think I made the right choice. :)
Recommendations: What do you Love?
I read so much this is really an impossible question to narrow down, but Tolkien, Lewis, L’Engle and Diana Wynne Jones (with special shoutouts to Canadian authors O.R. Melling and Monica Hughes!) were early inspirations, Brenna Yovanoff, Laini Taylor, and Holly Black are YA goals, and I recently fell in love with local author Sebastien de Castell’s intelligent mix of dark fantasy and humour. Obsessed with Seanan McGuire’s mind-blowing range.
In CanLit, Kelley Armstrong, Louise Penny, and David A. Robertson always deliver fantastic reads, and I adore the eerie vibes of Mahtab Narsimhan and Nancy Vo’s kids’ books.
If you could be one character from a children’s book, who would you choose and why?
I used to spend a lot of time racing up and down the playground yelling battle cries and pretending to be Martin the Warrior from Redwall, but in hindsight I’d probably choose someone with less fur and a little more height. Sophie from Howl’s Moving Castle?
If you could go live in one children’s book, where would you choose and why?
Maybe something from Diana Wynne Jones—lightly magical and a bit pastoral? But then there’s time-travel, or undersea adventures . . . so hard to choose! I’d definitely want to go somewhere other, no sticking around in plain old reality for me.
What’s one piece of advice you want to share with young writers and aspiring authors or illustrators?
If there’s something you love or feel determined about, don’t let anybody tell you it shouldn’t be that way. There’s a lot of well-meaning advice out there about how to make your creative work “better,” and especially when you’re starting out, you can feel like everyone else knows best. But fighting for what you care about (and keeping it weird!) is what makes your work uniquely yours, interesting, and worth sharing. (Also: unless you’re writing diary entries for your own satisfaction, share your work with an audience, don’t hide it!)
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