Katherine Koller writes for stage, screen and page. Her trilogy of Alberta Landworks plays includes Last Chance Leduc, The Seed Savers and Coal Valley and her collection of plays is Voices of the Land: The Seed Savers and Other Plays. Her six-part web documentary, Sustainable Me, features Edmonton youth changing their world (sustainablemeyeg.ca). Art Lessons, her first novel, was a finalist for both the Edmonton Book Prize and the Alberta Readers’ Choice Award. Her new book of short stories, Winning Chance, won a High Plains Book Award and the Exporting Alberta Award. A recital reading of her opera libretto, The Handless Maiden, played in Vancouver and her radio play, Hope Soup, part of the Edmonton Fringe Festival in 2019, is recorded at Edmonton Script Salon Podcasts. Her stories have been published in Grain, Room, Epiphany, Alberta Views and others; nonfiction in The Pandemic and Me, Prairie Journal and WestWord; and poetry in NorthWord, Prairie Journal and online at Poetry Pause. Katherine also coproduces Script Salon, a monthly new play reading series in Edmonton, and teaches at the University of Alberta.
Conversation to Dialogue
This workshop is for writers working in all forms, and encourages the use of dialogue in not only dramatic works but creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry, graphic novel and hybrid forms.
Participants will discuss the uses of dialogue, consider examples, and write a three-part exercise to create a short bit of dialogue for a work in progress or for a new piece.
The aim of the workshop is to understand how dialogue works and what it can do, and to produce a short original dialogue.
This workshop is open to writers of all genres and abilities, there is no preparation necessary and it can be provided in 1 to 2 hours either on Zoom or in person.
I have given versions of this workshop for the Canadian Authors Association, Grande Prairie Regional College, Spruce Grove Public Library, Victoria School for the Arts, Grande Prairie Public Library, King’s University, Kamloops Public Library, Downtown Eastside Writers (Vancouver), Edmonton Public Library, Lac la Biche Public Library, Whistlers Writers Festival, Wordstock Sudbury Literary Festival, Young Alberta Book Society TV, Saint City Writers, Saskatchewan Writers Guild, Ink Movement, Muskoka Writers Association, Alexandra Writers Center (Calgary) and Workshop West Playwrights Theatre (Edmonton).
Exploratory Revision
“Glance is the enemy of vision.” –Ezra Pound
This workshop focuses on deep diving into a scene from your work-in-progress with techniques from other forms. Bring a copy or separate file of a stalled scene, a wandering scene or a scene without resolution for your own personal exploration and excavation. We will be looking for action, but also reaction, what is said and done, but also why. We will be experimenting to find out more about our characters in scene, to see and write them in practical yet playful re-vision.
Tools of the Artist
An invitation to students to activate and feed their inner artist, in any medium, by designing a lifestyle that supports the creative spirit. This talk is accompanied by readings from my crossover novel, Art Lessons, about a girl who decides to become an artist.
