TWS Community Workshop: Found and Stolen Stories with Caroline Adderson

Writing Personal Essays

Where do you get your ideas? This is one of the most common questions asked of any published writer. While any answer will be idiosyncratic, almost every writer keeps one ear to the ground, listening for inspiration in the multitude of stories that surround us. In Found and Stolen stories, we will explore the various ways writers construct narratives, as well as the sources for pre-existing narratives. We will deconstruct a found story and reconceive it in a fictional version. We will conclude with a discussion about the ethics of using other people’s stories: when is a story found, and when is it stolen?

About Caroline Adderson

Caroline Adderson is the author of five novels, three collections of short stories, as well as many books for young readers. Her work has received numerous award nominations including the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, two Commonwealth Writers’ Prizes, the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Rogers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and two Scotiabank Giller Prize longlistings. Winner of three BC Book Prizes and three CBC Literary Awards, Caroline is also the recipient of the Marian Engel Award for mid-career achievement. She teaches in the Writing and Publishing Program at SFU. Her last collection of stories, Pleased to Meet You, was largely built around pre-existing texts.

About TWS Community Workshops

The TWS Community Workshops are planned and developed, and often hosted, by alumni of the Writer’s Studio at SFU. The proceeds from the workshops support writing scholarships in the Studio’s year-long cohort program. If you would like to know more about the Writer’s Studio, please visit our website. If you would like to submit a workshop idea, please email us at write@sfu.ca.