YouthWrite Elbow River II Experience 2022
July 10 - July 15, 2022
Day or Overnight Camp For Ages 15-19
An unforgettable experience for creative youth, spending time with quality instructors and other talented peers discussing ideas and sharing their work.
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WhenJuly 10th - July 15th, 2022 Full Week |
WhereFCJ centre: 219 19 Ave SW, Calgary, AB T2S 0C8 |
WhoGuest instructors thus far: Spyder Yardley-Jones Annette Loiselle Sue-Shane Tsomondo More TBA! Blue-Pencil Café: Cheryl Foggo Clem Martini Our Super Supers: Lead Super Anna Cooley Lead Super Joey Lucius Becky Collins Mason Repka Moe Ahmed Yemariam Abebayehu Aftikhar Mominzada MORE TBA! YouthWrite Director-Coordinator: |
Guest Instructors
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YOUTHWRITE INSTRUCTORS: THE CREAM OF THE CROP!
Throughout YouthWrite's history, we have prided ourselves on the calibre of our fine instructors. YouthWrite invites superbly talented and reputable instructors who represent the many facets of the performing, visual, musical, dance, film, and written arts. MORE INSTRUCTORS TBA SOON! |
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Annette Loiselle
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Spyder Yardley-Jones
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Sue-Shane Tsomondo
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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. |
The Amazing Supers
Handpicked and multi-talented, YouthWrite Supers are the centre of our camps. As artists, teachers and mentors, they bring the X-Factor to YouthWrite.
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Aftikhar MominzadaAftikhar 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. |
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Moe Ahmed
Mohamed Ahmed is a former YouthWriter, and this camp changed his life for the better! He is a recent graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada and also a musician under the name "Just Moe," offering music on every platform. Moe is over the MOON to be back at YouthWrite this summer to help inspire and mentor this next generation of incredible writers and to be Gail's ultimate favourite! |
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Becky CollinsBecky 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. |
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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. |
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Joey Lucius - Lead SuperJoey 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. |
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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. |
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YouthWrite Director- CoordinatorGail Sidonie Sobatis a multi-award-winning teacher and author, with twelve books for children, teens and adults, and a number of educational and academic articles. A Global News Woman of Vision and an Arts and Culture Citation Award recipient, she is the YouthWrite creator/ coordinator, an international presenter, an instructor in the professional writing program at MacEwan University and in the Faculty of Education at U of A. Gail was The Writers’ Union of Canada Regional Representative for Alberta, NWT and Nunavut, and writer in residence with the Metro Edmonton Federation of Libraries. She has moved forty times in her life from Badlands to Siksika Nation Reserve to hideous suburbs to Istanbul to the Sunshine Coast to her writer’s garret in a century-old temperamental house. She adores all of her Supers & Coordinators equally, and loves YouthWrite like a madwoman! |
Join the FunCome one, come all YouthWriters! Have fun, make new friends, and create great experiences. |
Use your passion for writing and apply for a scholarship from our list of available scholarships & grants.