Service Description

Not a horror fan? No problem! Ghosts — along with haunted houses, objects and places — can be characters in any type of story, from the comedy of Ghostbusters to the gothic romance of Wuthering Heights to Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Whether it’s magical realism, folk horror or simply putting your own spin on a campfire story, you’ll channel your creative spirit just in time for Halloween. Through in-class discussion about spectres, poltergeists and phantoms in cultural context combined with timed writing prompts and generative writing exercises and even an experimental foray into automatic writing, we’ll come away with the beginnings of our own ghost stories. Special attention will be paid to historical hauntings on Vancouver Island and the relationship between ghosts and technology. Students are asked to bring their own notebook and pen for this two-week course. About your instructor: Laura Maija Clarke is the author of Decline of the Animal Kingdom (ECW Press), which was included on the Globe and Mail and the National Post’s Top Books of the Year and praised as “a truly impressive and startling debut collection, dense and elegant” (Winnipeg Free Press) and a “mischievous, fabulist debut collection that blurs the lines between the literal and allegorical" (Publishers Weekly, starred review). She has published poetry, fiction and criticism in the National Post, Hazlitt, Toronto Life, PRISM International, Prairie Fire and Grain. She is a past winner of the Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers from the Writers’ Trust of Canada and has received numerous grants for her writing projects from Canada Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts Council. She holds a Master’s in English with a specialization in creative writing from University of Toronto.