Classes & Workshops

Wednesday, January 14, 2026 at 6 pm - Register Here
Wednesday, February 25, 2026 at 6 pm - Register Here

As the AFA's Film and Video Individual Grant deadline approaches on March 2, 2026, Arts Development Consultant Nick Haywood is providing two free webinars for those interested in applying. 

Please note that these funding opportunities are available to independent artists or collectives only. Incorporated companies cannot apply.

AFA Individual Project grants can provide up to $18,000 to support the development of individual Alberta artists, arts administrators, or an ensemble of artists by providing funding for:

• the development of a specific artistic work
• to pursue training,
• to pursue research, or,
• to pursue marketing activities. 

Nick will be providing tips and other useful information to apply for all project types, helping you develop your funding application and increase your chances of success.

Take a look at the Film and Video Individual Project grant guidelines ahead of the webinar and come with any questions. Nick will be happy to answer them!

Questions? Email nick.haywood@gov.ab.ca 

This year’s memoir hour panel features three stories of incredible journeys.

When: Sunday, October 19, 2025 @ 1 to 2:30 pm
Where: Citadel Theatre (Zeidler Hall), 9828 - 101A Ave, Edmonton
Tickets: $5 (student/low income), $15 (regular)

Featuring: 

Meltdown: The Making and Breaking of a Field Scientist by Sarah Boon

The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse: A Memoir by Vinh Nguyen

Water Borne: A 1,200-Mile Paddleboarding Pilgrimage by Dan Rubenstein

For more information please visit: https://litfestalberta.org/events/

When: Sunday, October 19, 2025 @ 12 to 2 pm
Where: Location TBD
Tickets: $15

Invite experimentation and spontaneity into your writing practice with My Weird Life. This writing workshop is designed for memoir, narrative poetry and autofiction writers, though it can be adapted to any form of personally-rooted writing. Writers in all stages of their practice are welcome.

The workshop structure includes generative freewriting prompts, short sample readings from Amber Dawn’s body-of-work, craft mini-lectures and discussion. Space is limited to 20 writers and registration is mandatory. Come with a notebook, laptop or other writing device and be ready to do some outside-of-the box writing.

For more information please visit: https://litfestalberta.org/events/

This year’s Brunch and Learn features a panel of books each focusing on ideas and themes related to wellness, well-being, recovery and healing.

This event will be catered by Edmonton chef Holly Holt 

Featuring: Chyana Marie Sage, Quill Christie-Peters and Kate J. Neville
Moderator: Anna Marie Sewell

When: Sunday, October 19, 2025 @12 to 1:30 pm
Where: Citadel Theatre (Schoctor Theatre Lobby), 9828 101A Ave 
Tickets: $30

For more information please visit: https://litfestalberta.org/events/

Join us for this very special reading and conversation with graphic memoirists Teresa Wong and Sarah Leavitt, featuring their latest graphic memoirs, All Our Ordinary Stories and Something, Not Nothing.

All Our Ordinary Stories: A Multigenerational Family Odyssey
WINNER of 2 Alberta Literary Awards (the Memoir Award and the Wilfrid Eggleston Award for Nonfiction)

When: Saturday, October 18, 2025 @ 3 to 4:30 pm
Where: Citadel Theatre (Zeidler Hall), 9828 - 101A Ave, Edmonton

From the author of Dear Scarlet comes a graphic memoir about the obstacles one daughter faces as she attempts to connect with her immigrant parents. Beginning with her mother’s stroke in 2014, Teresa Wong takes us on a moving journey through time and place to locate the beginnings of the disconnection she feels from her parents. Through a series of stories – some epic, like her mother and father’s daring escapes from communes during China’s Cultural Revolution, and some banal, like her quitting Chinese school to watch Saturday morning cartoons – Wong carefully examines the cultural, historical, language, and personality barriers to intimacy in her family, seeking answers to the questions “Where did I come from?” and “Where are we going?” At the same time, she discovers how storytelling can bridge distances and help make sense of a life.

A book for children of immigrants trying to honour their parents’ pasts while also making a different kind of future for themselves, All Our Ordinary Stories is poignant in its understated yet nuanced depictions of complicated family dynamics. Wong’s memoir is a heartfelt exploration of identity and inheritance, as well as a testament to the transformative power of stories both told and untold.

Something, Not Nothing:A Story of Grief and Love
Finalist, Will Eisner Award; Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction; Jim Deva Prize for Writing that Provokes

A poignant and beautifully illustrated graphic memoir about love and loss and navigating a new life. In April 2020, cartoonist Sarah Leavitt’s partner of twenty-two years, Donimo, died with medical assistance after years of severe chronic pain and a rapid decline at the end of her life. About a month after Donimo’s death, Sarah began making comics again as a way to deal with her profound sense of grief and loss. The comics started as small sketches but quickly transformed into something totally unfamiliar to her. Abstract images, textures, poetic text, layers of watercolour, ink, and coloured pencil – for Sarah, the journey through grief was impossible to convey without bold formal experimentation. She spent two years creating these comics.

The result is Something, Not Nothing, an extraordinary book that delicately articulates the vagaries of grief and the sweet remembrances of enduring love. Moving and impressionistic, Something, Not Nothing shows that alongside grief, there is room for peace, joy, and new beginnings.

For more information please visit: https://litfestalberta.org/events/

*This is a free workshop for BIPOC authors
14 spaces available

Facilitator: Justine Abigail Yu

When: Saturday, October 18, 2025 @ 2:30 to 5 pm
Where: Edmonton Public Library - Stanley A. Milner branch (EPL Community Room), 7 Sir Winston Churchill Square

As hyphenated individuals living in between cultures, we are, as activist Eboo Patel describes it, “standing at the crossroads of inheritance and discovery, trying to look both ways at once.” In this writing workshop, we write to honour our ancestors and imagine the path we lay for generations to come. 

We ask ourselves, who are our ancestors? For those of us from communities that have largely been displaced – on this land or another, by force or by choice – what connections do we hold to our past and to those who came before us? We look to our ancestors – biological or chosen – and honor all they have given us, while letting go of what no longer serves us.

We then turn to the future, to the possibilities that lay before us. Have you ever considered yourself as a future ancestor? As an elder with wisdom to share and possibilities to create? In the second part of our workshop, we ask ourselves, what riches do we inherit, and what discoveries are left for us to bestow upon future generations? 

No writing experience is necessary – only an open heart and an open mind with a readiness to give and receive vulnerability. We’ve carefully and intentionally designed this workshop to be intimate and generative. We’ll give you writing prompts to spark your creativity in a supportive environment. All writing materials will be provided.

For more information please visit: https://litfestalberta.org/events/
 

Take part in this exciting workshop with Julie Sedivy. 

When: Saturday, October 18, 2025 @ 12 to 2 pm
Where: Edmonton Public Library - Stanley A. Milner branch (Community Room), 7 Sir Winston Churchill Square
Tickets: $15

Sentences are the foundation of all writing, and mastering the sentence is essential to developing a strong writing voice. In this workshop, Sedivy will bring in gorgeous, surprising, intriguing, devastating sentences from a variety of genres, including romance, sci-fi, fantasy, young adult and children’s books, in addition to more traditional literary genres. She will discuss what makes a wonderful opening sentence, what kinds of final sentences leave the reader satisfied while also keeping the work alive in the mind. You will talk about sentence structure, how it can be exploited to create pacing or heighten certain emotions, and how varying the structure of sentences can make a passage more interesting or beautiful. You will discuss how some parts of the sentence highlight information more than others, much like throwing a spotlight on some of the content, making that portion of the sentence especially memorable. Or how certain devices subtly allude to background information that the reader can quickly construct, without bogging the prose down with boring exposition. This session will begin by having participants free-write a short passage, and then we would play with various structures and devices to alter their original sentences and observe the effects. This interactive workshop will have very broad appeal for writers across genres, and will be useful for beginning and advanced writers alike.

For more information please visit: https://litfestalberta.org/events/

This panel discussion brings together the founders of Laberinto Press, Hungry Zine and Living Hyphen to discuss the need for and the challenges of publishing multicultural, multilingual, and hyphenated authors in the ever-evolving landscape of Canadian publishing. This panel will be moderated by translator and Edmonton’s 11th Poet Laureate, Medgine Mathurin.

Featuring: Justine Abigail Yu, Luciana Erregue-Sacchi, Kathryn Lennon
Moderator: Medgine Mathurin
When: Saturday, October 18, 2025 @ 12 to 1:30 pm
Where: Edmonton Public Library - Muttart Theatre (7 Sir Winston Churchill Square)
Tickets: $5 (student/low income), $15 (regular)

For more information please visit: https://litfestalberta.org/events/