Valley Voices to host reading and writing workshop from two accomplished authors

Free writing workshop

Photo: Contributed

Shelley Wood is a Kelowna author, and will be sharing her writing tips at a free workshop in Vernon on Feb. 28.

Two local authors are hosting a workshop in an effort to share their processes and craft in story writing.

Writers Dania Tomlinson and Shelley Wood, both from Kelowna, are putting on a free Valley Voices workshop on Saturday, Feb. 28 at Vernon's Okanagan Regional Library.

Tomlinson recently penned Our Animal Hearts, which is set in the fictional Okanagan village of Winteridge. The story traces Iris Sparks life growing up on an orchard in the 1900s.

Growing up in the valley in the 1990s, when cartoon Ogopogos were everywhere, Tomlinson found another image that lingered and came to the fore as she began writing her novel.

“As kids, we would whisper about the thing that touched our foot, the shadow in the water. The adults didn’t seem to give it the seriousness it deserved,” she said. “And so, there was a secret darkness beneath the glossy, sunscreen-coated surface of the lake. That’s my general feeling of the Okanagan, a feeling I wanted to spill into this book.”

Wood, meanwhile, wrote The Leap Year Gene, which explores the societal pressure to stay and look young.

“It occurred to me that if a person lived in a world where she felt that everyone else was aging
more quickly than her, she would be in the awful position of losing her loved ones over and over again,” said Wood, also the author of The Quintland Sisters. “That tension is at the heart of my novel.”

Both Wood and Tomlinson have much to share about their characters as well as their craft, from writing slowly to radically shortening several drafts, and loving something new about each one along the way.

The author reading begins at 2:30 p.m., with admission by donation.