YouthWrite Elbow River II Experience 2022

Blue Pencil Café: Where you can have your work read by one of our amazing guest authors!

Cheryl Foggo - 

Cheryl Foggo is a filmmaker, playwright and author, whose work over the last 30 years has focused on the lives of Western Canadians of African descent. Her feature documentary John Ware Reclaimed premiered in 2020 and can be found at nfb.ca. Other recent projects include writing and directing the short film Kicking Up a Fuss: The Charles Daniels Story and writing The Sender for Obsidian Theatre Company’s 21 Black Futures. She is working on 2 new books and a new film.

Clem Martini - 

Clem Martini is an award-winning playwright, novelist, and screenwriter with over thirty plays, and thirteen books of fiction and nonfiction to his credit, including the W.O. Mitchell Award-winning Bitter Medicine: A Graphic Memoir of Mental Illness, The Unravelling, and The Comedian. His recently premiered play, Cantata (Rumours of My Crazy, Useless Life) was the 2021 winner of Theatre BC’s National Playwriting Competition. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and teaches in the School of Creative and Performing Arts at the University of Calgary.

Aftikhar Mominzada   

Aftikhar Mominzada, originally from Kabul, Afghanistan, is pursuing an information technology management major at the University of Alberta. Interested in entrepreneurship, economics, and technology, he aspires to enter the world of business after graduation. Aftikhar occasionally plays guitar and enjoys swimming, soccer, and squash. He experienced teaching kids during high school back in India and has been involved in various entrepreneurship and event-organizing activities both inside and outside school. This summer Aftikhar decided to experience something different by being a Super at the YouthWrite, and he looks forward to making the camp even more fun and meeting new people, plus being Gail’s favourite.

Becky Collins   

Becky Collins loves poetry, wordplay, and big ideas. A drama and humanities educator with Edmonton Public Schools, she uses historical and current media to explore complex narratives of our past and current global affairs with the young minds of tomorrow. Becky is a current graduate student at the University of Alberta in the Master of Arts and Communications and Technology program. After many years at River Valley YouthWrite, Becky is excited to be joining the Elbow River team. She is especially looking forward to singing Hallelujah by the fire with Gail and as her favourite. 

Mason Repka,

Mason wears many hats. Sometimes he is a writer, a creator, a world builder, a musician, and an artist. Other times he is a game master, facilitating worlds of play, whether it be LARP, D&D, or some other form of roleplay based shenanigans. Sometimes, he is a YouthWrite worker bee, doing communications and administrative work in the YouthWrite office. Still other times he is a homemaker and a cat-dad, and deeply enjoys spending time working around the house with his partner Cara and their cat, Phoebe. This summer, Mason is very excited to wear his super hat, and can’t wait for camp. Whatever hat he wears, he is always Gail’s favorite.

Joey Lucius - Lead Super

Joey Lucius is a performer and writer who's been a Rapid Fire Theatre staple for 15 years, contributes to the Beaverton, and is a Canadian Comedy Award winner for his work on YTV’s Canadian Screen Award nominated series That’s So Weird. He’s a proud cat daddy to a 16-year-old toothless angel named Gato. And he is so delighted to be Gail’s favourite.

Anna Cooley - Lead Super

Anna Cooley is an award-winning director, writer, cinematographer, and producer who has been telling stories with compelling characters and strong messages for over 20 years. Her projects push the boundaries of conventional storytelling by identifying unique narratives, collaborating with artists from a diverse range of disciplines, and experimenting with cutting-edge technologies such as virtual reality. Anna has been connected to YouthWrite for 22 years as both a camper and supervisor. She just can't get enough of Gail.