Word Wrestlers
1866 Main Mall V6T 1Z1 Vancouver, BC, Canada

Meet our second special guest for the July camp! As a songwriter and recording artist, Tariq has released four full-length albums and one EP and is currently putting the finishing touches on a new album to be released in early 2018. He is part of the six-piece experimental rock band, Brasstronaut, a collaborative project that has received accolades in both Canada and Europe. He is also currently working on a music memoir about growing up as a first generation Canadian kid with rock n’ roll dreams. Tariq teaches songwriting at UBC in the Creative Writing Department.

Joining us as a special guest during the July camp will be Sarah Leavitt! Get to know Sarah below: "I’m a writer and cartoonist in Vancouver, BC. When I was about 8 I made a little comic book about what every member of my family would be doing in 20 years. At the time I couldn’t imagine being that old, but now it’s actually 40 years later! I’m so glad I have that little book now. It makes me smile.... My first book, Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer’s, My Mother, and Me, a graphic memoir, has been published in Canada, the US, UK, Germany, France and Korea to international critical acclaim (LA Times, Vanity Fair, Globe and Mail, The Guardian, Die Welt). I’m working with Giant Ant Media on a feature length animation of Tangles. My second book, Agnes, Murderess, is a graphic novel set in nineteenth-century British Columbia. Forthcoming in September 2018 from Freehand Books! My prose and comics have appeared in anthologies, magazines and newspapers in Canada, the US and the UK."

Want to get your kids into poetry? Why not try sending them to school with a few of these Lunchbox Poems, courtesy of The Poetry Foundation? There's one for every special school day occasion!

Last but certainly not least in our 2017 Meet the Mentors series is Emily Pate! She is a writer, poet, obscure fact collector, and word enthusiast going into her second year of UBC’s Creative Writing MFA. She likes stories with hopeful endings and most of her fiction is speculative. Her poetry and creative nonfiction have been published in Blending Magazine and The Northwest Passage. She’s also the author of A.K.A., an ongoing young adult webcomic that celebrates girl superheroes and is meant to be the kind of superhero story she wanted growing up. Originally from California, she’s currently happily living in Vancouver and writing her first novel.

Yo Wrestlers, are you as #stoked as we are? We can't wait to meet you!

Next up in our Meet the Mentors series is Kailash the Connectivity Sorcerer! There are only a few spots left in our camps, so don't waitsign up today! www.wordwrestlers.com Kailash is from India and is almost famous. His short story collection published by Cedar books few years ago was almost shortlisted for an award. He almost got selected for the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, and he almost became a cricketer. He loves to read and write fiction an...d is a vocalist by training. He finished his first novel and realised it wasn’t all that good. You can still find the manuscript in his drawer. His work has appeared in several journals, including Going Down Swinging, Oxmag, Regime, Tincture, Santa Ana River Review and others. He is currently writing his almost first novel. And oh, he did win the Golden Ox award for prose in 2015 (Oxford Magazine, Miami University, Ohio). See more

Meet our next Mentor, Curtis "The Voice" LeBlanc! Curtis is the author of Good for Nothing (Anstruther Press, 2017) and Little Wild (Nightwood Editions, forthcoming 2018). His poetry has won the Readers' Choice Award in Arc's Poem of the Year competition and been shortlisted for The Walrus Poetry Prize and CV2's Young Buck Poetry Prize. When he isn't writing, you can find him singing songs or watching hockey.

Next up in our Meet the Mentors series is Sheryda "The Heart" Warrener! Sheryda is the author of the poetry collections Floating is Everything and Hard Feelings, and she has taught creative writing to kids in Japan, Sweden and here in Vancouver. She encourages writers of any age to explore their environment and express this experience through play, poetry, story-telling, collage and visual arts. As a preschool teacher in Stockholm, Sheryda led excursions to over twenty museum...s and galleries, including Pippi Longstocking’s House, The Museum of Transportation, The Museum of Water, and The Toy Museum. Each field trip inspired a different creative project: poems for Pippi’s monkey, postcard fiction, and dream house stories with accompanying drawings. In her life as a writer she makes poems about art, the planet Pluto, the tallest building in the world, the cosmonaut who holds the world record for living in space the longest (438 days!) and her son, Clyde. She is always at play with the shape her poems take. Her work has been shortlisted for some great prizes. She lives in Vancouver, where she teaches poetry at the University of British Columbia. Time is running out to register for one of our two camps this summer! Visit www.wordwrestlers.com to grab your spot!

It's CONTEST time! We're giving away a Kidsbooks gift card. To be entered to win, all you have to do is: 1) Like our Facebook page 2) Tag three friends in the comments on this post... As always, don't forget to register your child for this summer's camps at www.wordwrestlers.com!

For the third instalment of our Meet the Mentors series, we're pleased to introduce Word Wrestler Meagan Black! Meagan Black is the youngest of six children and an only childdepending on who you ask. She started her MFA at UBC this fall and is still freaking out. Outside of school, her interests include used book sales, working for Arc Poetry Magazine and editing her first Young Adult novel. Don't forget to register at www.wordwrestlers.com to secure your child's spot in one of our wonderful camps!

Mentors David and Curtis visited TYEE Elementary School today to do some fantastic map building exercises with students and teachers! Would you like Word Wrestlers to visit your school or class? Send us an email at [email protected]!

Meet our second returning Mentor, Ben "The Genius" Stephenson! Registration is filling up fast so be sure to visit www.wordwrestlers.com to secure your child's spot in one of our camps! Ben is the author of the novel A Matter of Life and Death Or Something, about a ten-year-old boy named Arthur. The book was longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and CBC Books named him one of 10 Canadian Writers to Watch. His work has appeared in EVENT, The Puritan, Joyland, The Coast, King Skateboard Magazine, and Best Canadian Stories 2016. He has mentored kids in both art and writing, first through schoolARTS in Halifax, and then Story Planet, Toronto’s answer to 826 Valencia. He’s now an MFA candidate at UBC in Vancouver, where he’s wrestling daily with a new book.

For the first post in our Meet the Mentors series, we introduce returnee David Geary! Registration is filling up fast so be sure to visit www.wordwrestlers.com to secure your child's spot in one of our camps! David writes plays, films, TV, graphic stories, fiction, and haiku on Twitter @gearsgeary. He's a sports nut who believes storytelling is a muscle to be stretched and trained by Writing Exercises for best results. David teaches screenwriting at Capilano University and playwriting at the Playwrights Theatre Centre. David is originally from New Zealand. His fave film of 2016 was Moana, as it showed what great navigators, and storytellers, Polynesians are. David has two young sons. They make up "Imagination Stories" each night before bed. This is where David gets all his best ideas.