If you are a writer in the Shuswap, there is a chair at the library with your name on it — and it’s free.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a famous author or a closet writer. All you need is to want to improve your writing skills and be willing to help other writers improve theirs, and the chair is yours for two hours on the second and fourth Wednesday of every month.
This is an open invitation from The Third House in collaboration with The Okanagan Regional Library to attend the start-up of a new writers’ group organized by Peter Blacklock and Joyce Adrian Sotski.
Meetings will be held twice a month from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. beginning Jan. 13. at the South Shuswap library.
Participants are asked to take a page or two of their own writing and a notebook with pen or pencil.
Blacklock and Sotski describe the writers group as being:
• A support group, a cheering squad for writers that provides honest feedback, so writers can improve their skills.
• A group that can play a crucial role for any writer, whether they are a publishing author, an unknown poet or are simply trying to write their memoirs.
• A group that gives participants the opportunity (when they are ready) to read from their work. Others will see the writing from a different perspective and can provide valuable feedback.
• A place where you pay attention to the writing of others and give them your feedback. If it’s good writing it can challenge and inspire your own.
• A safe and supportive place to come to hone writing skills.
As the creators of The Third House Interactive Multimedia, artists Blacklock and Sotski say their purpose is to “enhance opportunities for creative artists in the Shuswap.”
Their projects include Ida and Old Baldy’s Seniors’ Theatre Project, The Perigean Project, reader-writer sessions, a photography workshop and now the start of a new writers’ group in the South Shuswap.
With his background of a career in drama and education, Blacklock is a prolific writer, playwright, actor, musician and composer.
He is an active member of Shuswap Theatre, the force behind the summer dinner theatre productions at R.J. Haney Heritage Village and the founder of Seniors’ Theatre in Salmon Arm and Blind Bay.
Sotski’s career began in the printing industry as a graphic artist. With the arrival of the digital age, she moved smoothly into the world of websites and interactive CD-ROMS. Sotski is heading into retirement to work full time in the arts as a writer, a visual artist and experimental videographer.
For more information, contact Blacklock and/or Sotski through their website at www.thethirdhouse.ca, or call 250-675-5097.
