Adam Prudhomme
Editor
Award-winning author Gitanjali Kolanad will be leading a unique writing workshop in Napanee on Aug. 17, encouraging participants to engage all their senses before putting pen to paper.
Titled Sensing Your Way, the creative writing workshop will begin at the Lemon Tart B and B, located at 109 Thomas St. E, at 2 p.m. before walking to five selected locations throughout town. The four-hour workshop will conclude with a reading of what was produced during the exercise.
“Even when I had a class at the university I would make my students get up and go places to write,” said Kolanad. “So many writers use walking as a writing tool but for whatever reason once it gets into the kind of teaching aspect, everybody seems to let that go by the wayside. So many writers from Walt Whitman to Wordsworth…many, many use walking as a tool and I certainly do in my own practice and I thought why shouldn’t I teach my own students this? Why should I expect them to sit and write when I can’t do it? So I just kind of developed a whole practice around that.”
She adds the workshop is perfect for those who have a desire to write but didn’t know where to start.
“Sometimes too much is expected of you before you start writing,” said Kolanad. “That you already have a story that you’re working on or you want to find a beginning for a story or find the end for a story. If you don’t even know how to start, but you have that impetuous and you feel like you want to write, that has to be there.”
Kolanad’s short story The American Girl won a CBC literary ward and the collection Sleeping with Movie Stars was long-listed for the Frank O’Connor Short Story Award. Her works are frequently published in literary journals. She has also worked as a professor at Shiv Nadar University.
To register for the workshop, email lemontartbandb@gmail.com by Aug. 6. The cost of the workshop is $40 and will be capped at 10 participants.