Path to Publishing Conference
Take the next steps in your writing career with this in depth online conference, covering the important waypoints of writing, editing, compiling, submitting, and marketing. This is a low-barrier educational opportunity, with the cost of the conference supported by donation.
Schedule
Friday 6 November
5:00 PM – Welcome, state of the industry panel, and Friday night readings
Join us on Friday evening to meet your presenters with an informal chat about the state of the industry. We’ll want to hear from you about where you are in your publishing journey, and what you’re hoping to learn this weekend. Plus we’ll have readings and chats with some Pulp Literature authors to find out what their paths to publishing have looked like, and where they’re going from here!
Saturday 7 November
10:00 AM – Elevating your edits with Amanda Bidnall
Even when a professional editor is in the picture, there are some improvements only an author can make. Join Amanda as she discusses high-impact strategies to elevate your manuscript, from sentence to story, before it reaches your editor.
Amanda Bidnall has been a professional freelance editor—and Pulp Literature’s copy editor—since 2014. She has also enjoyed past lives as a published scholar, an instructor of British and European history at Simon Fraser University, and a musician. If she could go back in time, she wouldn’t change a thing except her decision to drop French in high school.
1:00 PM – Slushpile Escape Velocity with Genevieve Wynand
Submitting to literary magazines and publishers is an important step in your writing career. But what happens after you click ‘Submit’? Learn what goes on behind the editorial scenes and give yourself a big hand up out of the slush pile! Join short-fiction acquisitions editor and live slush-reading panelist — and fellow writer — Geneviève Wynand for an insider’s look at the submission process, from crafting compelling openings to avoiding common pitfalls. Whether you’re preparing your first submission or aiming for your hundredth rejection, you’ll leave with practical tips to help your manuscript sparkle bright among all that slush!
Geneviève Wynand is a BC-based author, editor, and writing coach with work in print, online, and included in public-art displays. A former editor at Pulp Literature, her words appear with The Malahat Review, PRISM international, Grain, Tricycle, and Introvert, Dear, among others. She has been known to emerge from her writer’s cave when tempted with coffee, deadlifts, or a too-quiet drum kit. Visit her at genevievewynand.com or on Instagram @genevievewynand.
3:00 PM – Nailing the Turning Point with JM Landels
All stories need significant transformations to occur — to characters, societies, or an environment — in order to satisfy the reader. Turning points, or watershed moments, are the parts that stick in the reader’s mind. They’re the point of highest tension in your narrative. Learn how to tweak the timing, improve the pace, and max the impact of your turning points to wow your readers. Bring writing tools and your work-in-progress in this hands-on workshop.
Jennifer Landels is the Managing Editor of Pulp Literature Press. She is a frequent lecturer, blue penciller, keynote speaker, and workshop facilitator at writing events locally and abroad, and has travelled to France, Germany, the UK, and the US to speak and teach at conferences. As JM Landels she writes fantasy and historical fiction, including the bestselling Allaigna’s Song trilogy, and her newest collection, Ilmar Songs. In addition to her literary activities she also teaches swordplay from horseback with Academie Cavallo at Cornwall Ridge Farm in Langley BC.
Sunday 8 November
10:00 AM – Compiling a poetry or fiction collection with Sierra Louie
In this session, participants will get a behind-the-scenes look at how works of writing are selected and arranged for anthologies, collection, and themed magazine issues, covering what to keep in mind for both writers and editors.
Sierra Louie is a Chinese-Canadian writer and artist working on unceded Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh land. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia, and is the Acquisitions and Poetry Editor at Pulp Literature Press. Her poetry and comics have appeared in Pulp Literature, CV2, EVENT, Grain, SAD Magazine, and elsewhere.
1:00 PM – Loglines, pitches, hooks, and your killer first page with Mel Anastasiou
In our final workshop, Mel will use her experience as an acquisitions editor at Pulp Literature Press to help you show your project is a clear winner. Listen to practical editorial tips, try out some useful exercises to tweak your pitch and your page one to strike interest in the hearts of editors, first readers, and buyers of books.
Bring a first page with you to work on during the presentation. Clarity shows, and editors love it.
Mel Anastasiou loves her writing life in Canada and the UK, devising mysteries for her amateur sleuths to solve. Her first novel, Stella Ryman and the Fairmount Manor Mysteries, won a Literary Titan Gold Book Award and was longlisted for the Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour. Stella Ryman and the Search for Thelma Hu was a finalist in the Canada Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence. Mel is also the author of two books on writing, The Writer’s Boon Companion and The Writer’s Friend and Confidante available through Pulp Literature Press.
3:00 PM – What next? panel – conclusions, questions, and answers
Join our presenters for a wrap-up session where you can ask outstanding questions, share your thoughts, and get fired up to finish out your 2026 writing year strong!
REGISTER HERE
A Month of Hours
Join us for four Fridays as we write together on our Discord server, guided by the Hour Stories cards. You’ll write approximately 1000 words of your work-in-progress or new work, with immediate feedback in a friendly and supportive environment. Each session runs approximately two to two and a half hours, and times are Pacific.
Spaces are limited to 20 participants.
Cost: $199 for four Fridays; $499 for three months; $60 for single session
Location: Online
- Fridays, 3 – 24 April, 10:00am – 12:30pm Pacific Time
- Fridays, 3- 24 July, 10:00am – 12:30pm Pacific Time
- Fridays, 9 – 30 October, 10:00am – 12:30pm Pacific Time
Would you like us to speak at your event or conference? Hire us! In addition to our popular Hour Stories workshops, we can teach these classes at your venue. Email us at info(at)pulpliterature.com to inquire about bookings.
The Hour Stories Workshop 
A writing circle can be one of the most positive and powerful sources of feedback and encouragement in the otherwise solitary occupation of writing. We invite you to join our circle for a morning of writing and reader response, using the The Hour Stories created by Dale Adams Segal. In this three-hour workshop you will generate approximately 1000 words of either a new story or a section of your work-in-progress. We will share our stories and inspiration over tea and good food, and walk away with fresh inspiration. The Hour Story cards are excellent tools to promote deeper insight, unstick a writing block, or take your story in a new and exciting direction. (For more about this process, read the review by KT Wagner on page 21 of Wordworks Magazine.)
Slush-pile Confidential
Learn what goes on behind the scenes at a literary press. What is the slushpile, how does it work, how long should you wait for a response? Learn what catches an editor’s eye and what can turn her off your story, and, once it’s accepted, what steps it goes through to become a published work.
Hiring the Right Editor: Avoid The Biggest Mistake Indie Authors make!
You want your work to shine, and you’ve set aside the money for hiring a professional editor… but wait! There are many stages to editing and many choices for hiring an editor. Just hiring a final “proofreader” is the biggest mistake most indie authors make. Find out the better options which will make your book a success! (60-90 minutes)
What is a Lit Mag?
How is a lit mag different from a commercial magazine? What are the advantages to getting published in one? What payment rates are normal? Learn how to decipher the masthead for insider clues about what really is going on with a literary magazine community.
Collaborative Editing in the 21st Century
Cloud-based file sharing allows communication between authors, editors, and designers with a level of speed and convenience never seen before in the industry. Learn how to make the most of online services such as Google Drive to enhance the quality of your editing and production process, while safeguarding access and tracking changes. Quality collaboration has never been easier!
Top 10 Lessons for a Successful Kickstarter Publishing Campaign Learn the do’s and don’ts from a team that has successfully funded on Kickstarter — thrice! length: can be tailored (30 – 90 minutes)
Getting your Feet Wet: The benefits of publication in literary journals
Most writers are after the money, and never consider wasting their time on submitting short stories or novel excerpts to small literary presses. Find out why these intimate settings can be the best place to learn the craft, learn the industry, and get recognition. Talk will also examine online submissions trackers, which can be useful tools in finding these markets. length: can be tailored (30 – 90 minutes)
David vs Goliath: writing the mismatched fight scene
Everyone loves an underdog, and having the little guy triumph in your story is gets your audience cheering along. But how do you make the reader believe it when your 90 lb weakling takes down the musclebound bully, or your wee slip of a girl lays out an armoured knight, a gang of street thugs and a pack of wolves? In this fun and interactive session, author and editor JM Landels brings her years of sword fighting and martial arts (mostly against larger opponents) to the writing table to demonstrate techniques that actually work, and discuss the realistic use of equalizers like swords, guns, horses and office furniture. length: 60 – 90 minutes
Writing Intensives at Café Duello
The Character Mission with JJ Lee
Join us at Café Duello in downtown Vancouver for a day of inspirational writing and character development for novelists, short fiction writers, and memoirists. In the morning, guest editor JJ Lee will take you through his workshop The Character Mission and in the afternoon you’ll have the opportunity to write out from your insights using The Hour Stories process.
The Character Mission, aka The Ahab Moment
Some may see echoes of Khan’s soliloquy in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan … but that’s not the point.
What is the point, is great works have great character motivation. It can be used to transfix the attention of readers and drive them through and sustain through a long or complex narrative. Join JJ in a workshop that will help you define and articulate your main character’s driving motive and learn to shape it into a call to action, adventure, and awe. It can serve as inspiration or it can form the heart of the first act of your current work-in-progress.
Ar, me mateys, I think ye do look brave.
JJ Lee is a Pulp Literature contributor. He is the acquiring editor for Tidewater Press. He teaches nonfiction at The Writer’s Studio, Simon Fraser University and at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts. His debut work, The Measure of a Man: The Story of a Father, a Son, and a Suit was a finalist for the Governor General’s, BC Book Prizes, Charles Taylor, and Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust awards for nonfiction. He is currently completing a Cthulhu-inspired novella for his Bekker Universe horror series.
date: Wednesday 22 January, 11am – 4pm
cost: $120 $60
cost for subscribers: $99 $49.50
location: Café Duello, 426 W Hastings, Vancouver BC
Summer Writing Challenge
The Summer Writing Challenge has been designed in partnership between the Federation of BC Writers, Pulp Literature, and The Writer’s Studio at SFU to support long-format writing projects and ongoing writing habits. Join us for a summer of digital learning, support, and community from July 15th to September 6th.
Riding & Writing Intensive
Easter Monday, 1 April 2024
For writers who want to write about horses without sounding like an ass! Fantasy and historical fiction settings often rely heavily on equines, and horses are one of the things most fantasy writers get horribly wrong.
In the morning of this full-day workshop you’ll get hands-on with horses, feel what it’s like to have a living creature with a mind of its own carry you, and learn the basics of keeping a horse alive and well through varied settings.
After lunch, you’ll put pen to paper and generate a thousand words or more on either your work-in-progress or a new piece of writing, incorporating your newly-acquired horse sense.
Monday, 1 April, 9:30am – 6pm
cost: $349
Includes lunch and a print subscription to Pulp Literature.
For riders who want to write. Join us for the afternoon only for two sessions of our popular Hour Stories workshop. Get rid of writer’s block and ignite your creativity in this intensive writing afternoon. Suitable for writers at any stage of their writing careers, as well as those who’ve always wanted to write but haven’t been able to start.
Monday, 1 April, 1pm – 6pm
cost: $199
Located at Cornwall Ridge Farm, 21955 16 Ave, Langley BC*
*Please note that this site is unfortunately not wheelchair accessible.