2021 Emerging Leaders in Publishing Day 1 Highlights

Growing up, Bitek never came to know what it meant to come from a country and live in it. Most of her life, she lived away and struggled with the idea of belonging. Lately, she came to understand that it’s ok not to be from somewhere, and to never land. Thus, the name of the conversation “The Gift of Never Landing” was inspired by her experience growing up.

As an author and poet, Bitek has written many notable works such as Sublime: Lost Words, Gauntlet, and 100 Days. The process for writing 100 Days was quite different compared to her other works. Inspired by a photo posted on social media by Wangechi Mutu in memory of the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, Bitek decided to write a poem each day for 100 days and posted it on social media. These poems were written to commemorate the Rwandan genocide and drawn on her own family’s experience of displacement under the regime of Idi Amin. As a witness to genocide, Bitek felt a sense of responsibility to spark meaningful conversations and have others think about what happened in the past.

One way to remind others about the past and to learn and inspire others about important issues is to have the message conveyed through art. Recently, Bitek collaborated with Chantal Gibson to create the new street-facing art on the windows of the SFU Library called “un/settled.” Un/settled aims to centre Blackness and celebrate Black thought & creativity in a climate of systemic violence against Black, Indigenous, and people of colour.

How to Make a Thriller Conversation

Next, we had a panelist of thriller authors Samantha Bailey, Amy Stuart, and Catherine McKenzie with their editor, Nita Pronovost, for a spine-tingling discussion about their writing process.

The authors spoke about the importance of having a premise and a pitch when writing a story. Most importantly, the premise must be “sticky,” meaning that you must be passionate and invested in your story that you are willing to spend the next couple of years building the storyline. As Catherine notes, “If it’s not going to be sticky to you, it’s never going to be interesting or sticky to a reader.”

One concern that upcoming authors have is whether their story will be able to sell in the market. Samantha advises to “never write to a trend because the trend will be gone by the time you write half the book.” She also emphasizes on the significance of passion and how “it has to be the story that you would want to read, so others will read it.”

Another challenge in the writing process is having writer’s block. Amy suggests overcoming this challenge by understanding your capacity, writing in a shorter time period, and setting a goal. She adds that “If your capacity is 5 minutes, then figure out how to write for 5 minutes. Don’t think about the novel you haven’t written yet.”

Throughout the event, attendees were delighted to have their questions answered by their favorite authors, with topics ranging from their writing inspiration to their writing process.