Tanya Huff, a wonderful Canadian science fiction, fantasy and horror writer, is giving a talk at the University of Toronto on Oct 21:
MONDAY OCTOBER 21 at 11 am in Room 2135, Sidney Smith Hall, 100 St.George Street, University of Toronto.
Tanya used work at Bakka, Toronto's wonderful science-fiction bookstore, which I haunted as a kid (and worked at in my early 20s). The first time I ever wrote a story that I thought would be good enough for someone other than my teachers or family to read, I jumped on a subway, rode down to Queen Station, walked to Bakka and handed her a printout. She'd just had her first novel published, and I really wanted to know what a real writer thought of it.
I was 13 at the time, and the story, while promising, had a lot of problems. Tanya read it
while I hung around at the back of the shop, looking at the used books, and then, in between selling books to customers, gave me an afternoon-long lecture on what I was doing right and how to learn to do the stuff I didn't know how to do yet. It was the first time I ever got feedback from a writer on my work, and it changed my life.
Tanya's written twenty-some novels now (!), and it's fantastic to see her still teaching young writers how it's done.
(Thanks, Mici!)
