KAMLOOPS, B.C.—Emerging writers can now accelerate their skills and talents through a new minor in Creative Writing at Thompson Rivers University.

TRU has a long history of Creative Writing, with award-winning children’s author Joan Weir teaching the first upper-year course in the days of University College of the Cariboo.

Current faculty includes prize-winning writers Susan Buis, Karen Hofmann, and George Johnson. Another faculty member, Nina Johnson, is researching how to enhance creativity through meditation and using journal-sized labyrinths where students move their fingers around the circular pattern.

“The Creative Writing minor challenges students to tap into their creativity, teaches them the elements of form through critique of contemporary works, and provides them with the opportunity to practice writing in the genres of short fiction, novel, poetry, playwriting and screenwriting,” says George Johnson, chair of TRU’s English and Modern Languages department.

Courses offered in the coming year include a first-year Creative Writing course, second-year Fiction and Poetry courses, and upper-year Stage and Screen and Advanced Fiction Writing courses.

Two creative writing groups exist on campus: TRU Fiction, which is open to the Kamloops community, and the student-led TRU Writers Club. Students regularly attend the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference in various U.S. cities, and have begun attending the Canadian Creative Writers and Writing Programs Conference, which will take place in Vancouver next spring.

MORE INFORMATION
George Johnson
Professor and Chair
English and Modern Languages Department
Thompson Rivers University
Tel: 250-371-5556
Email: gjohnson@tru.ca