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Available for virtual visits in : Manitoba, Prince Edward Island & Ontario

Craft: Author

Genre: YA Novels

Grades: Grade 10 +

Cost for School and Public Virtual Workshop Program with CCBC subsidy: $200.00

Virtual Workshop Information

Workshop 1: Writing is Rewriting Reconciling

Target Audience: Ages 14 +

Duration: 60 minutes

Description:

I grew up in Northern Manitoba with my best friends who are like family to me, two Indigenous girls living with high-functioning fetal alcohol syndrome. Rosie and Sarah are the only two people in the world I felt safe enough around as a kid to truly be free.

Write a letter (600-1200 words) to an Indigenous child whose remains have been uncovered in graves on the grounds of former Canadian residential schools run by the Catholic Church. 

Every day I ask myself why I don’t look like my best friends and what it would mean if I did. Tell an Indigenous child what you feel about their treatment, what their life means to you, what they’ve taught you.


Workshop 2: All For One and One For All:

Target Audience: Ages 14 + (Ideally suited for boys)

Duration : 60 minutes

Description:

The intersection between homophobia and misogyny that defined my traumatic experiences in the public schooling system has only ever been healed through the catharsis of writing. This is a workshop that teaches us how to use words as a tool to become the best version of ourselves and will help us to broaden our empathy and perspective by considering the concept of  “The Two C’s”: Confidence and Compassion.

Write a letter to yourself (600-1200 words) from the voice of who you want to be when you’re 32 years old. The idea is that by shifting your perspective and looking at yourself as you hope to be in the future it will create a gateway through which you can discover self-acceptance in order to become that desired person. How do you talk to yourself? What do you need to hear to get there? What needs to be forgiven? What needs to be fought for? How does it feel to be you?

Book List

Followers, written by Raziel Reid (Penguin Random House, 2020)

Kens, written by Raziel Reid (Penguin Random House Canada, 2018)

When Everything Feels like the Movies, written by Raziel Reid (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2014)

 

Biography

RAZIEL REID‘s debut young adult novel, When Everything Feels Like the Movies, won the 2014 Governor General’s Award for English-language children’s literature, making him, at 24 years old, the youngest ever person to win the prestigious award. When Everything Feels Like the Movies, optioned for film by Random Bench Productions, is inspired in part by the 2008 murder of gay teenager Lawrence Fobes King. Published in 2014 by Arsenal Pulp Press, it has since been published in the UK by Atom Publishing with The Telegraph listing it as one of the best YA novels of 2016, and in Germany by Albino Verlag. It was selected for inclusion in the 2015 edition of Canada Reads, where it came in second place. It was also nominated for a Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Children’s/Young Adult Literature, and for Publishing Triangle’s Ferro-Grumley Award. Raziel lives in Vancouver.