January – May 2012
What is Vancouver Manuscript Intensive?
Vancouver Manuscript Intensive (VMI) is a face-to-face program in which an established author enables you to develop your manuscript through one-on-one editorial consults and small group discussions on craft.
Vancouver Manuscript Intensive is in its sixth year. It has consistently received accolades from writers mentored in VMI, who have gone on to finish their manuscripts.
What makes Vancouver Manuscript unique?
VMI is unique because your VMI Mentor reads and assesses your entire manuscript at the outset, then determines a VMI five-month plan (based on your entire manuscript) for the particular revisions, reshaping and new writing you need to do on your manuscript.
VMI is intentionally small. Each mentor accepts 3-5 students.
VMI may be taken at a distance, if you are able to travel to Vancouver for most of your consults and group meetings.
How far along do you need to be with your manuscript?
To apply to VMI, you may have a full draft of a manuscript, a solid portion of a manuscript, or a disparate selection of writing from which your mentor will identify what the basis of your manuscript actually is.
Who are the VMI 2012 Mentors?
Creative Nonfiction & Poetry Mentor
Betsy Warland is VMI Director and Creative Nonfiction & Poetry Mentor. Betsy works with poetry, creative nonfiction, cross-genre narratives and lyric prose. Betsy has been a manuscript consultant and editor for thirty years and has published eleven books of creative nonfiction, poetry, and mixed genre. Betsy’s 2010 book of twenty-two essays on writing, Breathing the Page – Reading the Act of Writing (Cormorant Books), has received critical acclaim. www.betsywarland.com
Writers and authors with whom Betsy has done manuscript development and editing have gone on to publish books and to win (or be short-listed for) numerous awards.
Fiction Mentors
Claudia Casper is VMI Fiction Mentor for long forms. Claudia is a novelist who also writes reviews for The Globe and Mail and published a short nonfiction piece in the first Dropped Threads Anthology, edited by Carol Shields and Marjorie Anderson. She has just completed her third novel (first two published by Penguin, best-seller, well-reviewed, optioned for film and published in UK, US and Germany) and is trying to be cool waiting to hear back from various powers that be. She will focus on adapting the novel to the age of the internet and ways of increasing the drama and power of your narrative. www.claudiacasper.com/
Cathleen With is VMI Fiction Mentor for long or short forms. Cathleen’s first book, skids (Arsenal Pulp, 2006), about street kids on the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, was short-listed for a Relit Award. Among her many adventures, Cathleen has worked at a camp for disabled kids in Squamish, a bakery in Hawaii and a Greek deli in Australia. She served as a drama educator in Kathmandu, a caregiver at Mother Theresa’s Home for the Sick and Destitute in Calcutta, an English teacher to former sex trade kids in Cambodia, and as a teacher in Inuvik, NT and in Seoul, Korea. Having Faith in the Polar Girls’ Prison (winner of the Ethel Wilson Fiction Award), is her first novel. www.cathleenwith.com
What can you expect in VMI?
- An initial reading and assessment of your manuscript
- Three in-depth manuscript consults with your mentor
- Three group meetings led by your mentor that focus on questions of craft and structure
- A final progress assessment and plan for finishing your manuscript and (if appropriate) approaching a publisher
- An all-student public reading given at the end of May
What are the deadlines for VMI 2012?
APPLICATION DEADLINE: November 30, 2011
NOTIFICATION of results: December 7, 2011
TUITION DUE: December 16, 2011
TUITION: $2,000 to be paid in full or, upon request, to be paid in a series of post-dated cheques.
What must your application include?
Contact Betsy Warland for complete details. Please note in your email’s “Subject” field that you a requesting VMI 2012 application information.