People, Place and Voice: Three Authors, Three Workshops, Readings and a Party!
Join Yukon Words on Saturday, November 21, for a full day of literary events at the Kwänlin Dün Cultural Centre! Featuring Canadian authors Wayne Grady, Kate Harris, and Yvette Nolan, the day includes three writing workshops followed by an evening of readings, conversation, and celebration.
Writing People: How to Make Characters Come Alive on the Page
With Wayne Grady
Characters are the soul of creative writing, but how do we make people come alive on the page? No one wants their work to have wooden, clichéd, or boring characters. This is as true for writers of nonfiction as it is for novelists.
In this workshop, we’ll explore techniques and exercises that will help us to (a) imbue our characters with real personalities, (b) have them behave in believable ways, and (c) clarify their motivations.
We’ll look at ways to sharpen our character descriptions: what people look like, how they sound, how they dress. We’ll learn to help readers recognize our characters’ motivations: what they think they want, what they actually need, and what they get. We’ll consider the implications of describing our characters from different points of view: their own, that of their acquaintances, and that of the writer. We’ll also examine the importance of following creative writing’s cardinal rule – show, don’t tell – when creating characters.
Event Details
Date: Saturday, November 21, 2026
Time: 9:00 AM – 11:00 AM
Location: Kwänlin Dün Cultural Centre, Multipurpose Room, Whitehorse
Tickets: $15
TICKETS AVAILABLE ON EVENTBRITE HERE
About Wayne Grady
Wayne Grady is the author of 14 books of nonfiction, including The Quiet Limit of the World; The Bone Museum; The Great Lakes, which won the National Outdoor Book Award; and Tree: A Life Story (co-authored with David Suzuki). His science writing has earned him four Science in Society Awards, and he has been nominated for the Toronto Book Award and the BC Book Prize.
His novel Emancipation Day was longlisted for the Giller Prize and won the 2013 Amazon.ca First Novel Award. His fourth work of fiction, The Cartel and Other Cover Stories, is a collection of eight stories inspired by the works of such writers as Chekhov, de Maupassant, Isak Dinesen, Joseph Roth, and Lydia Davis, and was published to national acclaim this fall by Freehand Books.
Wayne has translated more than a dozen novels from French to English; his translation of Antonine Maillet’s On the Eighth Day won a Governor-General’s Award. He taught creative writing at the University of British Columbia for 11 years and has given workshops at Sage Hill and the Kingston School of Writing. With his wife, novelist and memoirist Merilyn Simonds, he divides his time between Canada and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
Find Wayne at waynegrady.ca
Thank You to Our Supporters
Many thanks to our generous sponsors Air North and Northern Vision Development, and to our funder, the Government of Yukon’s Yukon Arts Fund.
Special thanks to Mac’s Fireweed for book sales and Ramshackle Theatre for bar service.