Winnipeg, MB - Méira Cook has been selected as the Winnipeg Public Library’s Writer-in-Residence for 2013-2014. Starting October 1, 2013 and ending in April 2014, Méira will work with the public through individual consultations and group workshops, in addition to allocating time to her own writing.
“As an adopted Winnipegger, I feel lucky to have found a home in a city with so many resources for writers and artists,” Cook said. “The Millennium Library is, in many ways, an important focal point for the city’s writing community.”
Méira Cook was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and immigrated to Canada in the early 1990s. While she worked as a journalist in South Africa, she began writing poetry and fiction when she came to Canada. She has published four books of poetry, a novella, and a book of essays. The House on Sugarbush Road, her first full-length novel, was published last year and won the McNally-Robinson Manitoba Book of the Year Award. Cook lives in Winnipeg.
Established in 1985, the Library’s Writer-in-Residence program is designed to give new, emerging, and established writers a chance to have their manuscripts read and critiqued.
Copies of manuscripts may be dropped off at any Winnipeg Public Library branch, emailed to wpl.writerinres@gmail.com or mailed to Millennium Library, attention:
Writer-in-Residence
Reader Services, 251 Donald Street
Winnipeg, Manitoba
R3C 3P5
Writers should include a cover letter containing a brief description of their writing background and the specific feedback they would like, as well as all contact information including an email address. Manuscripts will be accepted beginning October 1. The Writer-in-Residence service is free.
Manuscripts must follow strict submission guidelines: typed in 12-point font (prose: double-spaced, poetry: single-spaced), on one side of the page only. Prose submissions should not exceed 15 pages; poetry submissions should not exceed six poems.
The Writer-in-Residence program is co-sponsored by the Winnipeg Public Library Board, the Government of Manitoba, Friends of the Winnipeg Public Library, and the Manitoba Writers’ Guild.