At the Humber School for Writers event at this year’s International Festival of Authors in Toronto, I was pleased to host a short reading by the HSW/IFOA Author for a Day contest winner, Kate Belcher. Kate is a British expatriate, ex-museum curator and ex-clown who placed second in the 2010 Toronto Star Short Story Contest, and was a 2011 CBC Literary Awards finalist. She is currently finishing a children’s novel about a boy who accidentally triggers a nightmare invasion. You can read more about her and her writing here.

Kate’s reading was followed by a talk about writing craft by Suzanne Desrochers, Humber School for Writers alumna, and author of the bestselling novel Bride of New France. Suzanne was remarkably poised and coherent for someone who had given birth to her second child only six weeks before. She had interesting stories to tell about her path to publication, including that she abandoned navel-gazing type contemporary stories in favour of historical fiction, which she researched by taking a master’s degree in history. She is now following up that degree with a Ph.d., beginning work on her second novel, and caring for her young children. Which makes her either an inspiration or a superhuman. Click here for more info about her.

The final part of the event was the flash assessments of manuscript pages submitted in advance by some of the people in attendance. To do this, I was joined by the gracious and thoughtful Kate Cassaday, an editor of Harper Collins Publishers. We did our best not to bruise too many egos in the process – and we did not spend our entire time looking as skeptical as we do in this pic, while entertaining a question from the audience, I think. Our hope was that everyone who attended the event could consider themselves a winner.

Again this year, I’m going to be hosting and assessing first pages of manuscripts at “The Word Doctors Are In” Master Class event presented by the Humber School for Writers at the International Festival of Authors in Toronto.

This year’s event takes place on Sunday October 23, 2011, from 11 am to 1 pm in the Brigantine Room in the Harbourfront Centre. Author Suzanne Desrochers (Bride of New France) will speak about her approach to writing fiction, the winner of the Author for a Day contest will read the winning entry; and HarperCollins Editor Kate Cassaday and I will evaluate manuscript first pages submitted in advance by attendees.

Again this year, the Humber School for Writers and the International Festival of Authors are presenting the Author for a Day contest (administered by lucky me).

Submit two pages of fiction or narrative non-fiction by October 7, 2011 for a chance to read at the October 23, 2011 “Word Doctors Are In” Master Class event at the IFOA at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto, followed by a literary lunch with the event speakers.

Entries (maximum 600 words) should be cut and pasted into the body of an email, identified by genre, and sent with name, address, phone number, and proof of contest entry fee payment to authorforadayifoacontest@gmail.com by October 7, 2011. The $15 contest entry fee can be paid to the Harbourfront Centre Box Office at this link.

The winning entry will be chosen by Humber School for Writers faculty.

This Sunday, September 25th, I’ll be doing some hosting and speaking for the Humber School for Writers at the Wordshop Marquee tent at Toronto’s free Word on the Street festival. I’ll host various author and editor speakers (see full lineup here) starting at 2:00 pm.

Last week I was fortunate to be teaching at the Humber School for Writers Summer Workshop in Creative Writing in Toronto, alongside my fellow faculty members Nino Ricci, Richard Bausch, Wayson Choy, Isabel Huggan, Julia Glass, Olive Senior, Bruce Jay Friedman, John Metcalf, Guy Vanderhaeghe, Alistair MacLeod, Erika De Vasconcelos, David Bezmozgis, and Frieda Wishinsky.

Though I’ve taught the workshop for several years, I always wonder and worry beforehand how the week will go, how the group chemistry will develop. My group of five this time were diverse in interests and background – three are working on serious novels, one is writing a travelogue/memoir, and the fifth writes short stories – and they seemed a little subdued at first.

I had to work harder than usual to get them to laugh at my jokes, but by the end of the week, friendships had formed among them, they appeared willing to take at least some of my writing advice, and if they weren’t exactly eating out of my hand, they did seem to enjoy the Sea Salt Chocolate Chip Nut Cookies I baked to mark the bittersweet moment of our parting, when, after a convivial and thought-provoking week spent sharing the writing life, we all left the workshop to go write in solitude.

And now, a hot off the press cross-post from the Hungry Novelist, my food blog:

I thought I’d spice up the blog a little by introducing a new soon-to-be regular feature wherein published writers complete the newly minted (heh) Hungry Novelist Questionnaire, a set of questions about reading, writing and eating, in the tradition of Vanity Fair’s Proust Questionnaire, New York magazine’s New York Diet, and the NYT Sunday Routine. I’ve cross-posted the questionnaire here.

First up to give the questionnaire a trial run is me! More writers to come in the weeks ahead.

Writer: Kim Moritsugu
Currently residing in: Toronto
Website: www.kimmoritsugu.com
Blog: The Hungry Novelist
On Twitter? Yes. As kimmoritsugu.

What’s going on in your writing life right now?
I recently had a YA story and an easy-read novelette published, I’m preparing to teach at Humber School for Writers Summer Creative Writing Workshop from July 9-15, 2011, and I’m chipping away at a novel in progress, my fifth or sixth.

What’s your writing routine:
Avoid writing for as long as possible each day, then consider myself productive if I get in two or three hours of writing or writing related work (like a blog post) before midnight.

What do you usually eat for breakfast?
Glass of o.j., slice of Harbord Bakery caraway rye toasted with butter, tea.

What good books have you read recently?
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson. One Day by David Nicholls.

What did you eat for dinner last night?
Spaghettini with chopped fresh tomatoes, kalamata olives and baby salad greens, drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

Writing rules you live by:
I admire clarity, a strong story, skilful plotting and a mixture of funny and sad/bitter and sweet in the works of others, and try to incorporate those elements and qualities into my work.

I’m very pleased that my YA story Marcus the Great has just been published in an anthology for the educational market  by McGraw-Hill Ryerson. The anthology has the rather clunky title of iLit: Reality Imagined: Stories of Identity and Change and also includes stories by Jean Little, Richard Scrimger, Sheree Fitch, and several other established and up-and-coming Canadian writers.

Marcus the Great is a coming of age story of sorts, about a mellow biracial basketball player from downtown Toronto who attends the city’s Northern Secondary School, likes history class, and starts dating an uptown girl. It was totally inspired by the exposure I got to the fascinating Toronto high school basketball scene when my two sons played ball for Northern. Go Red Knights!

The story will also be available soon as a download for teachers who want to pick and choose from  a selection of stories on offer to put together their own classroom anthologies at ilit.ca. To that end, the ilit site is currently offering up Marcus the Great as a sample work – you can read (but not print) the whole thing, with illustrations! – here.

How much do I love the idea of high school students studying my story?  A lot.