Fiction Colloquium

facilitated by Marina Endicott

Applications for the 2022 Fiction Colloquium are now closed.

“Sage Hill is a community connector and hotbed of ideas in precarious times and good times.”
       – Tanis MacDonald, 2021 Colloquium Alum

Programming Update

The 2022 Fiction Colloquium will take place in-person in Muenster, SK at St. Peter’s College. Sage Hill and St. Peter’s are carefully following provincial health guidelines to ensure we can provide creative writing programming while keeping participants and instructors safe. If it is not possible to gather due to provincial restrictions, the program will be held online and tuition will be reduced accordingly.

Fiction Colloquium Dates: May 17-26, 2022

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Click here for information on tuition

Click here for information on scholarships & bursaries

Facilitated by Marina Endicott

Marina Endicott’s Good to a Fault was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and CBC Radio’s Canada Reads, and won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. The Little Shadows was short-listed for the Governor General’s award and long-listed for the Giller Prize, as was Close to Hugh. Her latest, The Difference (The Voyage of the Morning Light in the US), won the Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton book award and the City of Dartmouth fiction prize. She teaches creative writing at the University of Alberta, Humber Writing School, and the Banff Centre for the Arts.

“The mood and the muse will find you at Sage Hill. I can’t think of a more conducive setting for a writer/learner.” 
       – Robin Dyke, 2021 Colloquium Alum

Tuition

Application fee:  $25
Fiction Colloquium Tuition:  $1750

• Tuition includes:
  ✔ Live group sessions discussing the craft of writing
  ✔ 1-on-1 mentoring with the instructor providing individual critiques
  ✔ Accommodation in your own personal room with a private bathroom
  ✔ Three meals a day, plus snacks
  & much more!

For a full list of amenities and all that is included in tuition, click here.

Venue: St. Peter’s College

Rooms

• Each writer will have a private bedroom with their own bathroom and shower.
• Rooms include a desk that will serve as a personal writing space.

Group Sessions

• Group sessions will be held in the Lower Severin Lounge, a large area that allows for social distancing.

Meals

• Meals will be in the college dining room. This area is also large enough to allow for social distancing. The venue is following strict restaurant protocols for food service.

“I love Sage Hill. The venue was excellent for a writing retreat. I was very pleased with Covid provisions and was grateful for the access we had to the grounds.”

       – Susan Wismer, 2021 Colloquium Alum

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Q & A with Marina Endicott

1) Sage Hill: What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?

Marina: My first writing mentor, Gertrude Story, when she was the Writer in Residence at the Saskatoon Public Library, marked a passage in my story and put a note in the margin: “Careful of I-wanna-make-sure-you-get-it!” Good advice that I still use every day. Respect the reader’s intelligence, and let them fill in the story for themselves.

2) Sage Hill: What’s the best short story or book you’ve recently read?

Marina: I’ve loved a couple of books lately—Miriam Toews’s Fight Night, which reminds me painfully of my own relationship with my mother and also makes me laugh; and Piranesi, Susanna Clark’s eerie meditation on the world we knew and the Covid we have lived with for so long now.

3) Sage Hill: How do you tackle writer’s block?

Marina: The same way I would tackle plumber’s block or lawyer’s block: I do the work anyhow. It’s more fun to work with the hot fire of inspiration, but you can work without it, and in the finished book you can’t tell which day was which.

4) Sage Hill: What time of day do you write and why?

Marina: I write early in the morning to catch whatever solutions I’ve dreamed, and later in the morning to finish pages, and while I’m eating my lunch at the computer; I write in the afternoon when things are quiet, and after dinner when I can think straight. All the time, every time, and sometimes not at all. It’s all right not to write every day because you are still thinking every day, and sometimes you need to think more to be able to write.

5) Sage Hill: What is the ideal environment for you to write in and why?

Marina: My ideal environment would be Muenster and Sage Hill all year round, but life interferes. Depends on the project: I’m writing in silence now but sometimes music has been important. A good Aeron chair, a wireless keyboard and a big monitor are what I need most now. I’d like a writing hut in the garden like you read about, but that is not suitable for Saskatoon.

6) Sage Hill: What character in literature do you relate to the most and why?

Marina: Hmmm. Definitely one of the more obscure types. I’d like to say Anne Elliott in Persuasion, or Mrs. Bentley in As for Me and My House—but really, it’s probably Edie in Terrible, Horrible Edie by E.C. Spykman. Or Miss Mole, in her eponymous book by E.H. Young: a spinster who makes the only choice she can, with some courage and a short laugh at herself.

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Please contact sage.hill@sasktel.net if you have questions about the
Spring Colloquium.

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Bursaries and Financial Support

Writers are frequently successful at securing artists’ grants and/or external professional development funding to attend Sage Hill Writing, we recommend exploring your funding options.
Here’s a place to start!

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Sage Hill’s Spring Writing Workshop is made possible
by generous donors, funders, and community partners.

Many thanks to the Saskatchewan Arts Board, Canada Council for the Arts, SaskCulture, SaskLotteries, the Saskatchewan Book Awards.