Mackie Lake House announces winners of this year’s Writer-in-Residence program

Okanagan College Media Release

Poetry and prose are likely to pour out of Mackie Lake House this coming season with the announcement of two new writers for its Writer–in-Residence program.

Fiction writer and sometimes playwright Terry Jordan and poet Gillian Wigmore have been named as recipients of this year’s fall and winter residencies. The writers will each spend two weeks at the historic house to work on their craft, all while making connections with English and Creative Writing students enrolled at Okanagan College and local secondary school students.

The program was established in 2003 as a partnership initiative between the Mackie Lake House Foundation and Okanagan College through the auspices of Kalamalka Press.

“Over the years the Writer-in-Residence program has become a vital organ in the College’s full-bodied commitment to the future of Canadian literature,” said Kevin McPherson, Kalamalka Press editor. “The writers who come here are tremendously generous with both our students and the general public in sharing their knowledge, their craft and their passion.”

Jordan, who will be taking up the September residency, is an award-winning fiction writer, essayist and dramatist whose stage plays have been produced across the country. His book of stories It’s a Hard Cow won a Saskatchewan Book Award and was nominated for the Commonwealth Book Prize.

Wigmore will be arriving at Mackie Lake House in January. The Prince George author has written two books of poems, including soft geography (2007), which received the 2008 ReLit Award. She’s also been short-listed for many awards including the Dorothy Livesay BC Book Prize for Poetry.

Over the years, Mackie Lake House has welcomed numerous writers through its doors including Dr. Ronald Ayling, Dennis Cooley, David Pitt-Brooke and Christine McPhee, Robert Kroetsch, Dawne McCance, Gary Geddes, Peter Midgley, Mona Fertig and Brenda Schmidt.