There’s a lot happening this fall with the Sudbury Writers’ Guild!
First I would like to introduce you to the new executive for the 2021-2022 season.
- Liisa Kovala – President
- Lisa Coleman-Brown – Vice President
- Nancy Daoust – Treasurer
- Jen Bingham – Membership Coordinator
- Secretary – Vacant
Thank you to the outgoing executive members Tom and Emily for all their work over the years. I’ve also stepped down as Vice President but will remain on as in a communications and technical support role (technically not an executive position).
Next our first meeting of the fall is planned for the September 30th, the last Thursday of the month. For the first time since Feb 2020, we are planning an in-person meeting. Of course it won’t look anything a pre-pandemic meeting. For starters we’re planning on hosting a hybrid meeting where people can choose to attend in person or virtually. The in-person location will be at College Boreal in our regular classroom – M3360 on 3rd Floor.
We’re still reviewing Boreal’s COVID-19 precautions and protocols and will let you know how it applies to us and our meetings soon. We do know that space will be limited and we will need to have people pre-register so we don’t have too many show up the day of the meeting (assuming we reach the maximum). I will be setting up a registration form shortly and will post about it when its available.
We’re also making some changes to our Sudbury Writers’ Guild Facebook Group – https://www.facebook.com/groups/sudburywritersguild. At present its an closed group (to limit spam) but open to anyone who wants to join regardless of whether they become members or not. We realized that after the successful launch of the Painted Voices chapbook this summer that we don’t have a public facing Facebook presence to accommodate the general public and potential members to find out more information about us. To remedy this, we have started a new Facebook Page – https://www.facebook.com/sudburywritersguild which we invite Guild members and the public to Like/Follow.
Moving forward we plan to limit the Facebook Group to active paid members only. This helps the Guild and our members in a number of ways. Firstly it becomes less cluttered and more accessible for members to talk to other members about their ongoing projects and about Guild related business (such as planning reading events, inner circles etc.). Secondly, it provides added value to members who pay their annual membership dues. We will still continue to engage new writers’ looking to connect with our community and answer questions via this website and the Facebook Page.
Our membership fees are $30 for the season September 2021 to August 2022. You can pay in person (at a monthly meeting) or via e-transfer. Our membership sign up/renewal period typically runs until end of October. After October 31st, 2021 we will begin the process of removing inactive members from the Facebook group.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that you can WIN a free membership for this season if you visit our new Facebook Page and like and share our page, but don’t forget to comment. See this post for details https://www.facebook.com/sudburywritersguild/posts/111035661301997
Thanks for you support and stay tuned for lots of exciting events coming your way in 2021-2022.
Andy Taylor