King’s Writing Workshops

Make your writing dreams a reality!

King’s offers five online writing workshops

Winter 2026

Whether you’re working on a novel, a memoir, a journalistic piece or are just developing your writing skills, the King’s Writing Workshops can help you become the author you want to be. Our non-credit 4- and 8-week workshops are open to everyone, everywhere, whether you’re still at the idea phase or already have words down on the page! All workshops are online.

Registration open

Four-week workshops on Zoom—$349 + HST
(Early Bird pricing $299 + HST—ends December 31)

Introduction to Fantasy Writing

Our Bodies, Our Lives: A Memoir Workshop for Writers with Disabilities

Eight-week workshops on Zoom—$599 + HST
(Early Bird pricing $549 + HST—ends December 31)

Writing for Children

Introduction to Memoir

The Art of the Short Story

SPECIAL PRICING: Members of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia, University of King’s College students, faculty, staff, parents and alumni receive a discount of $50 on 8-week courses and $25 off on 4-week courses!

King’s has a limited number of bursaries available for students requiring financial assistance. Bursary applications open.

Tuesdays, beginning February 3 (8 weeks)
6:30–9 p.m. AST/ADT
Instructor: Wanda Taylor

Have you ever thought about writing a children’s book? Easy, right? Not exactly. There are many nuances when it comes to writing for children, including physical age vs emotional age, genre traps, story length and target audiences. Then there’s the actual craft of writing the story, which includes topics such as narrative arc, character emotion, writing difficult subjects and understanding what kids are reading and why. We will dive into these and also look at some successful titles of picture books, middle grade, graphic novels and Young Adult (YA). So bring your idea and your enthusiasm to this 8-week session as we delve into the world of children’s writing. You will develop some tools to help you learn the craft of telling stories for children. In the final session, we will explore the market and the process of submitting manuscripts to children’s book publishers.

Wanda Taylor is the award-winning author of 12 books of fiction and nonfiction, which span across children’s, YA and adult markets. Her most recent title, The Sky’s the Limit (Nimbus Publishing, 2025) is a middle-grade nonfiction STEM book spotlighting past and present BIPOC aviators who blazed a trail in the sky. Her highly anticipated middle grade novel, A Recipe for Rhyme and Rescue (HarperCollins, 2024) was an Indigo’s book selection in 2025 and nominated for several book awards. Wanda’s middle grade novel The Grover School Pledge (HarperCollins, 2023) was also nominated for awards such as the Hackmatack Award and was the 2024 winner of the Northern Lights Book Award in the US. Wanda was commissioned to write several children’s books for the Amazing Canadian Women series (Beech Street Books, 2024). Two of them included the life of the Honourable Jean Augustine and singer/songwriter, Alessia Cara.

Besides degrees in Journalism and Education, Wanda also holds degrees in Social Work and Early Childhood Education. As a college professor, she teaches courses in Children’s Media, Screenwriting, Doc Filmmaking and Journalism. As a former Acquisitions Editor, she acquired titles from many notable authors, and continues to support writers as an editor, writing coach and sensitivity reader. Wanda’s work can be found in numerous publications and anthologies, including the Globe & Mail, Quill & Quire, Black2Business, and Atlantic Books Today.

Wanda is an active member of several national organizations, including CANSCAIP, The Writers Federation of Nova Scotia, Screen Nova Scotia, and the Writers Union of Canada. She is the former VP of the Creative Non-Fiction Collective and most recently, served as the 2025 Mentor in Residence for the WFNS’s Mentorship Program for emerging Black writers. Wanda has won many awards for her body of work, including the Women of Excellence Award for Arts and Culture.

Registration open

Photo of child reading by Johnny McClung on Unsplash

Thursdays, beginning February 5 (8 weeks)
6:30–9 p.m. AST/ADT
Instructor: Adrienne Gruber

Are you interested in writing memoir, but not sure where to start? Have you started writing a memoir but you’re struggling with form and structure? Or perhaps you’re simply curious and looking for new approaches to structure, both for your collection as a whole and for specific sections? Creative nonfiction and memoir writing have shifted dramatically over the last decade and the possibilities are endless! This course is designed to help you structure a larger work-in-progress through workshopping and writing exercises, and will introduce you to a variety of diverse and unconventional structures found in full-length memoirs.

Adrienne Gruber is an award-winning writer originally from Saskatoon. She is the author of five chapbooks, three books of poetry, including Q & A, Buoyancy Control, and This is the Nightmare, and the creative nonfiction collection, Monsters, Martyrs, and Marionettes: Essays on Motherhood. She won the 2015 Antigonish Review’s Great Blue Heron poetry contest, SubTerrain’s 2017 Lush Triumphant poetry contest, placed third in Event’s 2020 creative non-fiction contest, and was the winner of SubTerrain’s 2023 creative non-fiction contest. Both her poetry and non-fiction has been longlisted for the CBC Books awards. In 2012, Mimic was awarded the bp Nichol Chapbook Award. Adrienne lives with her partner and their three daughters on Nex̱wlélex̱m (Bowen Island), B.C., the traditional territory of the Coast Salish peoples.

Registration open

Tuesdays, beginning March 3 (8 weeks)
6:30–9 p.m. AST/ADT
Instructor: David Huebert

In this course we will learn to write and revise short fiction and to provide meaningful, productive and respectful feedback for our peers. Engaging with readings from fiction innovators (George Saunders; Sarah Shun-lien Bynum; Jamaica Kincaid) and craft experts (Matthew Salesses; Felicia Rose Chavez; Ursula K. Le Guin), students will bolster their writing toolboxes through discussion, experimental in-class forays and a practice of peer critique that will make them stronger readers, colleagues and proleptic self-editors. Welcome to the fiction laboratory! 

David Huebert’s writing has won the CBC Short Story Prize, appeared several times in Best Canadian Stories, and was a finalist for the 2020 Journey Prize. Huebert’s first short story collection, Peninsula Sinking, won a Dartmouth Book Award and was runner-up for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award. Chemical Valley won the Alistair MacLeod Short Fiction Prize and was a finalist for the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and the ReLit Award. David teaches in the fiction MFA program at the University of King’s College in Kjipuktuk (Halifax), where he lives with his partner and two children. His debut novel, Oil People, was published in 2024 and has been called a “lyrical,” “elegant” and “wildly hallucinatory.”

Registration open

Photo of laptop by Nick Morrison on Unsplash

Wednesdays, beginning February 4 (4 weeks)
6:30–9 p.m. AST
Instructor: Enzo Le Doze

In this four-week workshop, we’ll explore the foundations of fantasy, be it historical, epic, urban, romantasy, dark or not. We will study short stories and excerpts by writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin, N.K. Jemisin and Brandon Sanderson. We’ll also discuss and write, paying attention to worldbuilding, character creation and the role of magic in shaping plot and theme.

A key part of the workshop will be studying classic fantasy tropes (quests, chosen ones, magical artifacts, strange creatures) and learning how to modernize or subvert them so your stories hit like no other. We’ll look at how to build immersive settings without overwhelming the reader, how to create true emotional stakes within fake worlds and how to use fantasy to reflect or challenge real-world ideas.

By the end of the course, you’ll have practiced essential elements of fantasy writing, experimented with breaking genre rules and developed original stories that combine wonder, tension and novelty.

Originally from France, Enzo Le Doze recently moved from Halifax to Montreal, after having spent years in Calgary and the East coast of the U.S. He is an experienced educator with an MA in Foreign Language Pedagogy and French Literature.

He integrates technology and creative techniques into language teaching and writing. After completing a Certificate from Stanford University in Novel Writing, he is now a brand-new MFA graduate of the University of King’s College in Fiction Writing.

He mostly writes Sci-Fi and Fantasy, with a few contemporary short stories at times.

Registration open

Photo of fantasy landscape by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

Mondays, beginning March 2 (4 weeks)
6:30–9 p.m. AST/ADT
Instructor: Kate Gies

Writing a life can feel like a daunting task. How do we start? How do we keep going when we’re feeling stuck? As writers with disabilities, memoir writing is often a complex and multi-layered endeavor. What does it mean to live in a body deemed sick, unruly, and/or outside society’s narrow definitions of “normal”? How do we push back on narratives that trivialize, shame, pity, or otherwise misrepresent the disability experience? How do we develop writing practices that honour our bodies? In this 4-week course, we’ll explore memories and events that are important to us, writing practices that feel good in our bodies, and innovative ways to tell our stories authentically (or, as disability writer and activist Alice Wong put it “in our own words, by our own accounts”). Through discussion, mini-lecture, in-class writing exercises, and opportunities to share writing for first-blush feedback, we’ll dive into the art and magic of writing our lives. Whether you’re just starting out or working on a draft, you’ll leave this class with fresh ideas and a renewed excitement for writing your story.

Kate Gies is a writer and educator living in Toronto. She teaches creative nonfiction and expressive arts at George Brown College. Her writing has appeared in The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, The Malahat Review, The Humber Literary Review, Hobart, and the Best Canadian Essays 2024 Anthology. In 2025, she was named a CBC Writer to Watch. Her memoir, It Must Be Beautiful to Be Finished, about her childhood medical experiences related to a missing ear is out now with Simon & Schuster Canada.

Registration open

Photo by Will O’Hare