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Memoirists Sharing Writing Tips at UFV Event on March 18

Fraser Valley – Three writers with a penchant for sharing secrets will spill about the process of memoir writing at the University of the Fraser Valley on March 18.

UFV Writer-in-Residence Lindsay Wong will host memoirists Jenny Heijun Wills and Antonio Michael Down for a reading and conversation about the authors’ writing process.


Jenny Heijun Wills is a Canadian writer whose memoir Older Sister, Not Necessarily Related won the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction in 2019. Her book was also named as one of the Globe & Mail’s “100 Books that Shaped 2019”, the CBC’s “Best Canadian Non-Fiction of 2019”, and Adoptee Readings’ “100 Adoptee-Authored Books from the Decade”. She teaches writing and critical race studies in literature at the University of Winnipeg.

Antonio Michael Down is the author of Saga Boy. He grew up in southern Trinidad, northern Ontario, Brooklyn, and Kitchener. He is a musician, writer, and activist based in Toronto. His debut novel, Molasses, was published to critical acclaim. In 2017, he was named by the RBC Taylor Prize as one of Canada’s top emerging authors for nonfiction.



Lindsay Wong, UFV’s Writer-in-Residence for 2021, is the author of the bestselling, award-winning memoir The Woo-Woo: How I Survived Ice Hockey, Drug-Raids, Demons, and My Crazy Chinese Family. She has a BFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia and MFA in literary nonfiction from Columbia University, and she is now based in Vancouver, Canada. My Summer of Love and Misfortune is her first YA novel.

She offers her advice on memoir writing:

“I read somewhere that if people didn’t want to be written about badly, then they should have behaved better. I have no advice about not offending loved ones or not-so-loved ones because the act of writing a memoir will always offend someone, even if they are not in the book. I tell my students that memoir is essentially your story so you should shape it how you see fit, but realistically, if you try to please everyone, you can lose sight of your story and your voice. There’s usually a reason why someone needs to write a memoir, and they are not doing it for money or fame. I’d say write the version of the truth that feels consciously right to you. Memoir writing is not fun or for the faint of heart. Only do it if you can’t see yourself writing anything else.”

Thurs, March 18
11:30 am-12:30 pm
Online — Zoom

Admission is free and the public is welcome.

To register for this event:
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/why-we-wrote-it-a-reading-and-conversation-with-acclaimed-memoirists-tickets-144062792691

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