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Volunteer Opportunities

RCLAS is member-driven. If you’re interested in getting involved, please email secretary@rclas.com 

 

Volunteer Call 2019

 

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royalcitylit

Non-profit Society, Literary Arts.

Join us this Wed eve Oct 28 at Centennial Lodge f Join us this Wed eve Oct 28  at Centennial Lodge for our Halloween event (full details below 🎃)!!! 
Steve Miller is a spoken word artist, slam poet, storyteller, performer, workshop creator/facilitator, singer(he thinks), musician(nope but I still try), renaissance handy person(who identifies as a man-kinda).  He currently lives and works on the unceded and ancestral territories of the Qayqayt First Nation, the first people of this land, and the shared traditional territories of other Coast Salish peoples, including the Musqueam, Kwantlen, Kwikwetlem, Tsleil-Waututh, and Katzie nations.

Steve Miller's work is defined by its relatable accessibility, often comedic yet raw honesty and unflinching, confessional style. His poetry courageously explores the complexities of human connection, personal trauma, and the search for healing.

RCLAS Halloween Event –
Poets Wanted: Dead or Alive Open Mic
Feature Poet Steve Miller
& Tellers of Short Tales with author KT Wagner
OCTOBER 28 WED
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM, Doors 6:30 PM
Location: CENTENNIAL LODGE, Queen’s Park, New Westminster
FREE TO ATTEND.

Hosted by Janet “Lady Raven” Kvammen and Chelsea “Athena’s Owl” Comeau  

Read your own dark, eerie, mysterious poem on Open Mic
OR a Dead Poet of your choice.

Costume Contest! Win a prize!
Trick or Treat! Bring a treat to share if you like! 

#rclas #halloween #poetswanteddeadoralive
Join us this Wed eve Oct 28 at Centennial Lodge f Join us this Wed eve Oct 28  at Centennial Lodge for our Halloween event (full details below and on slide 2 🎃)!!! 

KT Wagner writes Gothic horror, poetry, and op/ed pieces in the garden of her Maple Ridge home. She helps create literary community including write-ins, an annual writing retreat and co-organizing Golden Ears Writers. KT graduated from Simon Fraser University’s Writers Studio in 2015 (Southbank 2013). She’s a member of the Horror Writers Association of America (HWA), SF Canada (National Association for Speculative Fiction), the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA), and the Federation of BC Writers. Her short stories and poetry are published and podcast in magazines and anthologies. KT's debut short story collection, A Key in Her Heart and Other Subversions, is forthcoming in the fall of 2026 from Trepidatio Publishing.

RCLAS Halloween Event –
Poets Wanted: Dead or Alive Open Mic
Feature Poet Steve Miller
& Tellers of Short Tales with author KT Wagner
OCTOBER 28 WED
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM, Doors 6:30 PM
Location: CENTENNIAL LODGE, Queen’s Park, New Westminster
FREE TO ATTEND.

Hosted by Janet “Lady Raven” Kvammen and Chelsea “Athena’s Owl” Comeau  

Read your own dark, eerie, mysterious poem on Open Mic
OR a Dead Poet of your choice.

Costume Contest! Win a prize!
Trick or Treat! Bring a treat to share if you like! 

#rclas #halloween #poetry #openmic #poetswanteddeadoralive
RCLAS Writing Workshop:  Intro to Glosa Poetry wit RCLAS Writing Workshop: 
Intro to Glosa Poetry with Bonnie Quan Symons

Date: Sunday NOVEMBER 15, 2026 
Time: 3:00 pm - 4:30 pm  
Location: ANVIL CENTRE | STUDIO 417 
777 Columbia Street, New Westminster

This workshop is Free BUT registration is required.
Email secretary@rclas.com   

Workshop Description: A glosa poetry workshop exploring the traditional 15th-century Spanish poetic form of "glossing" or expanding upon a borrowed four-line quotation (cabeza or epigraph) into four ten-line stanzas. In this 90-min workshop, Bonnie will share her passion for the glosa form including examples, discussion of technique & structure, as well as offering helpful advice and resources to guide your way.

Bonnie Quan Symons is an Asian Canadian poet who has had her poems published in journals in Canada, the United States, and in Australia. She is a member of Pandora’s Collective, Writers’ International Network (WIN) Canada, and Asian Canadian Writers Workshop/LiterASIAN. She is currently a board member of the Historic Joy Kogawa House. Originally from Calgary, she has worked for two Canadian universities and two BC hospitals as a secretary and a program assistant. She lives in Vancouver and currently works at the BC Teachers' Federation.

#rclas #writingworkshop #poetryworkshop
Congratulations to Anna Veprinska! Anna Veprinsk Congratulations to Anna Veprinska! 

Anna Veprinska is the author of the poetry collections Bonememory
(University of Calgary Press, 2025) and Sew with Butterflies (Steel Bananas Press, 2014), the chapbooks Stone Blossom (Anstruther Press, 2022) and Spirit-clenched (Gap Riot Press, 2020), and the monograph Empathy in Contemporary Poetry after Crisis (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), which received Honourable Mention in the Memory Studies Association First Book Award. She won the 2025 Chinook Poetry Contest, was a finalist for the 2024 Ralph Gustafson Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2023 and 2021 Austin Clarke Prize in Literary Excellence. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Calgary. Her most recent collection of poetry is Wound Archive  (The Porcupine's Quill, 2026)

Congratulations from all of us at the Royal City Literary Arts Society!

We are pleased to announce the 2026 Longlist for our 13th Annual Fred Cogswell Award For Excellence in Poetry.

Thank you to our 2026 Cogswell Award Judge Kevin Spenst! We appreciate your hard work and dedication.

Our finalists in alphabetical order:

📌Tabako on the Windowsill by Hari Alluri (Brick Books)

📌Long Exposure by Stephanie Bolster (Palimpsest Press)

📌A Bow Forged from Ash by Melissa Powless Day (Palimpsest Press)

📌Several Small Animals Enclosed in a Benedictine Monastery by Vera Hadzic (Anvil Press)

📌Devotional Forensics by Joseph Kidney (icehouse poetry | Goose Lane Editions)

📌What We Know So Far Is …by Conor Mc Donnell (Buckrider Books | Wolsak & Wynn Publishers)

📌Unravel by Tolu Oloruntoba (McClelland & Stewart | Penguin Random House)

📌Myth by Terese Mason Pierre (House of Anansi)

📌Wellwater by Karen Solie (House of Anansi)

📌Bonememory by Anna Veprinska (University of Calgary Press)

Thank you to everyone who submitted this year. We appreciate your support.

Congratulations! Our Top 3 will be announced in November.

https://rclas.com/2026-fred-cogswell-award/

#CogswellAward #RCLAS #poetry
#Canadianpublishers #canlit
#FredCogswell #bookaward #poets
#CogswellLonglist
Congratulations to Karen Solie! KAREN SOLIE grew Congratulations to Karen Solie!

KAREN SOLIE grew up in southwest Saskatchewan. Her five previous collections of poetry–Short Haul Engine, Modern and Normal, Pigeon, The Road In Is Not the Same Road Out, and The Caiplie Caves–have won the Dorothy Livesay Award, Pat Lowther Award, Trillium Poetry Prize, and the Griffin Prize, and been shortlisted for the Derek Walcott Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize. A 2026 Windham-Campbell Prize recipient and 2023 Guggenheim Fellow, she teaches half-time for the University of St Andrews in Scotland and lives the rest of the year in Canada.

Congratulations from all of us at the Royal City Literary Arts Society!

We are pleased to announce the 2026 Longlist for our 13th Annual Fred Cogswell Award For Excellence in Poetry.

Thank you to our 2026 Cogswell Award Judge Kevin Spenst! We appreciate your hard work and dedication.

Our finalists in alphabetical order:

📌Tabako on the Windowsill by Hari Alluri (Brick Books)

📌Long Exposure by Stephanie Bolster (Palimpsest Press)

📌A Bow Forged from Ash by Melissa Powless Day (Palimpsest Press)

📌Several Small Animals Enclosed in a Benedictine Monastery by Vera Hadzic (Anvil Press)

📌Devotional Forensics by Joseph Kidney (icehouse poetry | Goose Lane Editions)

📌What We Know So Far Is …by Conor Mc Donnell (Buckrider Books | Wolsak & Wynn Publishers)

📌Unravel by Tolu Oloruntoba (McClelland & Stewart | Penguin Random House)

📌Myth by Terese Mason Pierre (House of Anansi)

📌Wellwater by Karen Solie (House of Anansi)

📌Bonememory by Anna Veprinska (University of Calgary Press)

Thank you to everyone who submitted this year. We appreciate your support.

Congratulations! Our Top 3 will be announced in November.

https://rclas.com/2026-fred-cogswell-award/

#CogswellAward #RCLAS #poetry
#Canadianpublishers #canlit
#FredCogswell #bookaward #poets
#CogswellLonglist
Congratulations to Terese Mason Pierre! TERESE MA Congratulations to Terese Mason Pierre!

TERESE MASON PIERRE is a Toronto-based writer and editor whose work has appeared in The Walrus, ROOM, Brick, Quill & Quire, Uncanny Magazine, and Fantasy Magazine, among others. One of ten winners of the Writers’ Trust McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize, she was named a Writers’ Trust Rising Star. Terese Mason Pierre is an editor at Augur, a Canadian journal of speculative literature, and the author of Myth (House of Anansi Press), a collection of poetry.

Congratulations from all of us at the Royal City Literary Arts Society!

We are pleased to announce the 2026 Longlist for our 13th Annual Fred Cogswell Award For Excellence in Poetry.

Thank you to our 2026 Cogswell Award Judge Kevin Spenst! We appreciate your hard work and dedication.

Our finalists in alphabetical order:

📌Tabako on the Windowsill by Hari Alluri (Brick Books)

📌Long Exposure by Stephanie Bolster (Palimpsest Press)

📌A Bow Forged from Ash by Melissa Powless Day (Palimpsest Press)

📌Several Small Animals Enclosed in a Benedictine Monastery by Vera Hadzic (Anvil Press)

📌Devotional Forensics by Joseph Kidney (icehouse poetry | Goose Lane Editions)

📌What We Know So Far Is …by Conor Mc Donnell (Buckrider Books | Wolsak & Wynn Publishers)

📌Unravel by Tolu Oloruntoba (McClelland & Stewart | Penguin Random House)

📌Myth by Terese Mason Pierre (House of Anansi)

📌Wellwater by Karen Solie (House of Anansi)

📌Bonememory by Anna Veprinska (University of Calgary Press)

Thank you to everyone who submitted this year. We appreciate your support.

Congratulations! Our Top 3 will be announced in November.

https://rclas.com/2026-fred-cogswell-award/

#CogswellAward #RCLAS #poetry
#Canadianpublishers #canlit
#FredCogswell #bookaward #poets
#CogswellLonglist
Congratulations to Tolu Oloruntoba! Tolu Olorunto Congratulations to Tolu Oloruntoba!

Tolu Oloruntoba is a project management person and lapsed physician from Ibadan, Nigeria. He is the author of The Junta of Happenstance (Palimpsest Press, 2021), Each One a Furnace, and Unravel (McClelland & Stewart, 2022, 2025). His work has won the Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize and Governor General’s Literary Award for English Language Poetry. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, and writes poems in the small crevice between parenting two young children, working as a poetry and copy editor, and managing provincial healthcare projects.

 Congratulations from all of us at the Royal City Literary Arts Society!

We are pleased to announce the 2026 Longlist for our 13th Annual Fred Cogswell Award For Excellence in Poetry.

Thank you to our 2026 Cogswell Award Judge Kevin Spenst! We appreciate your hard work and dedication.

Our finalists in alphabetical order:

📌Tabako on the Windowsill by Hari Alluri (Brick Books)

📌Long Exposure by Stephanie Bolster (Palimpsest Press)

📌A Bow Forged from Ash by Melissa Powless Day (Palimpsest Press)

📌Several Small Animals Enclosed in a Benedictine Monastery by Vera Hadzic (Anvil Press)

📌Devotional Forensics by Joseph Kidney (icehouse poetry | Goose Lane Editions)

📌What We Know So Far Is …by Conor Mc Donnell (Buckrider Books | Wolsak & Wynn Publishers)

📌Unravel by Tolu Oloruntoba (McClelland & Stewart | Penguin Random House)

📌Myth by Terese Mason Pierre (House of Anansi)

📌Wellwater by Karen Solie (House of Anansi)

📌Bonememory by Anna Veprinska (University of Calgary Press)

Thank you to everyone who submitted this year. We appreciate your support.

Congratulations! Our Top 3 will be announced in November.

https://rclas.com/2026-fred-cogswell-award/

#CogswellAward #RCLAS #poetry
#Canadianpublishers #canlit
#FredCogswell #bookaward #poets
#CogswellLonglist
Congratulations to Conor Mc Donnell! Dr. Conor Mc Congratulations to Conor Mc Donnell!

Dr. Conor Mc Donnell is a poet and physician at the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto. He is the author of two collections of poems (most recently, This Insistent List) and three chapbooks. His poetry has appeared in various Canadian and international publications as well as noted medical journals such as JAMA and CMAJ. He is an associate professor at the University of Toronto and editor in chief of Case Repertory, a Narrative-Based Medicine Lab publication that seeks to engage and promote the voice of the patient in collaboration with their health-carers. He is a frequently invited international lecturer on pediatric perioperative care,
error prevention and opioid stewardship, and he is current vice-president of the Canadian Pediatric Anesthesia Society. Conor works weekends at Sellers & Newel Second-Hand Books in Little Italy, Toronto, where they have words for people like him.

#CogswellAward #RCLAS #poetry
#Canadianpublishers #canlit
#FredCogswell #bookaward #poets
#CogswellLonglist
Congratulations to Joseph Kidney! Joseph Kidney i Congratulations to Joseph Kidney!

Joseph Kidney is the author of Devotional Forensics (icehouse poetry), winner of the Griffin Poetry Canadian First Book Prize. His poems have appeared in Best Canadian Poetry and are forthcoming in The New Yorker, The Iowa Review, Copper Nickel, The Cincinnati Review, Oxford Poetry, and TriQuarterly. He won a National Magazine Award Gold Medal for Poetry and the Poem of the Year award from Arc Poetry Magazine. He has received support from the Banff Centre, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and Civitella Ranieri. Named a 2026 “writer to watch” by CBC Books, he currently works as a lecturer at Stanford University, where he completed his PhD in Renaissance drama.

#CogswellAward #RCLAS #poetry
#Canadianpublishers #canlit
#FredCogswell #bookaward #poets
#CogswellLonglist
Congratulations to Vera Hadzic! Vera Hadzic is a Congratulations to Vera Hadzic!

Vera Hadzic is a writer from Ottawa. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Arc Poetry Magazine, periodicities, Experiment-O, Minola Review, Hexagon Magazine, Crow & Cross Keys, flo., These Days, and elsewhere. Her poetry chapbook, Fossils You Can Swallow, was published by Proper Tales Press in 2023. She has an Honours BA in English and history from the University of Ottawa, and is pursuing an MA in English Literature from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Several Small Animals Enclosed in a Benedictine Monastery is her first full-length book.

#CogswellAward #RCLAS #poetry
#Canadianpublishers #canlit
#FredCogswell #bookaward #poets
#CogswellLonglist
Congratulations to Melissa Powless Day! Melissa P Congratulations to Melissa Powless Day!

Melissa Powless Day is Anishinaabe and Kanien’kehá:ka from Bkejwanong Territory (Walpole Island First Nation), with family ties in Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. She is a writer, scholar and educator who is currently pursuing a PhD in Indigenous Education at Western University. She also serves as the chair for Western’s Indigenous Writers’ Circle and as a Visiting Cultural Teacher for the London District Catholic School Board. Her work has appeared in the Temz Review, TNQ, the Windsor Review, Luna Station Quarterly and Yellow Medicine Review. Her first poetry chapbook, Secondhand Moccasins, was published in 2023 by Anstruther Press and was shortlisted for the bpNichol Chapbook Award. Her first full-length collection, A Bow Forged from Ash, will be published by Palimpsest Press and is slated for release in late Fall 2025. She lives in Deshkan Ziibi (London, Ontario) with her research assistants, Pixie the chihuahua and Shiloh, the orange tabby.

 #CogswellAward #RCLAS #poetry
#Canadianpublishers #canlit
#FredCogswell #bookaward #poets
#CogswellLonglist
Congratulations to Stephanie Bolster! Stephanie Congratulations to Stephanie Bolster! 

Stephanie Bolster has published five books of poetry. Excerpts from her latest book, Long Exposure, were selected as finalists for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2012 and 2019. Her first book, White Stone: The Alice Poems, won the Governor General’s and the Gerald Lampert Awards in 1998 and appeared in French as Pierre blanche: poèmes d’Alice, translated by Daniel Canty. Her work has also received the Bronwen Wallace Award, the Norma Epstein Award, the Archibald Lampman Award, and The Malahat Review’s long poem prize, among others, and has been translated into Spanish, German, and Serbo-Croatian. Her poems have appeared on the walls of the Ottawa Art Gallery and on Vancouver buses. She has given poetry readings across Canada, from St. John’s to Victoria, and has been interviewed for such programs as CBC's "This Morning" and "The Arts Tonight" and profiled in the Montréal Gazette, Books in Canada, and The Ottawa Citizen. Editor of The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008 and The Ishtar Gate: Last and Selected Poems by the late Ottawa poet Diana Brebner, and co-editor of Penned: Zoo Poems, she was born in Vancouver and grew up in Burnaby, BC. She is a professor of creative writing at Concordia University, where she has taught since 2000, and lives in Pointe-Claire, Québec, located on the Mohawk (Kanien’kehá:ka) territory of Skaniatara:ti.

#CogswellAward #RCLAS #poetry
#Canadianpublishers #canlit
#FredCogswell #bookaward #poets
#CogswellLonglist
Congratulations to poet Hari Alluri! @harialluri Congratulations to poet Hari Alluri! 
@harialluri 

Hari Alluri (he/him/siya) is the author of carving ashes (CiCAC/Thompson Rivers Press), The Flayed City (Kaya Press), chapbook Our Echo of Sudden Mercy (Next Page Press), and most recently Tabako on the Windowsill (Brick Books). He is a recipient of awards, grants, fellowships, and residencies as a poet, editor, educator, and teaching artist. Word to ancestry: Pangasinan, Ilokano, Telugu. Word to Wxwməθkwəy ̓əm, sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlílwətaʔɬ peoples, on whose lands siya arrived at age twelve, where his work continues to connect. With thanks to Kumeyaay, Kwantlen, Katzie, Kwikwitlem, T’uubaa-asatx, and Quw’utsun peoples, on whose lands his work has grown or continues to grow. Find Hari’s writing widely in anthologies, journals, and online venues—most recently in I’ll Get Right On It: Poems on Working Life in the Climate Crisis (Fernwood Publishing), The Capilano Review, wildness, and poetry pause (League of Canadian Poets)—and his collaborations nearby and beyond.

#CogswellAward #CogswellLonglist 
#poetry #CanLit #Canadianpublishers
RCLAS Halloween Event – Poets Wanted: Dead or Aliv RCLAS Halloween Event –
Poets Wanted: Dead or Alive Open Mic
Feature Poet Steve Miller
& Tellers of Short Tales with author KT Wagner
OCTOBER 28 WED
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM, Doors 6:30 PM
Location: CENTENNIAL LODGE,
 Queen’s Park, New Westminster
FREE TO ATTEND.

Hosted by Janet “Lady Raven” Kvammen and Chelsea “Athena’s Owl” Comeau  

Read your own dark, eerie, mysterious poem on Open Mic
OR a Dead Poet of your choice.

"Round Robin" reading of Poe's "The Raven". It's a tradition! 

Costume Contest! Win a prize!
Trick or Treat! Bring a treat to share if you like! 

#halloween
#RCLAS #poetry #spookystory 
#openmic #theraven
DEADLINE REMINDER! Our 2026 Write on! Contest Dea DEADLINE REMINDER!

Our 2026 Write on! Contest Deadline is October 15 at midnight.

https://rclas.com/2026-write-on-contest/

3 Categories:

o Non-Fiction (1500 words max)

o Fiction (1500 words max)

o Poetry (1 page single spaced max)

· Submission Fee is $10 per submission (one story or one poem) for RCLAS members, 

$20 per submission for non-members. 

Annual RCLAS Membership $35 a year.

1st prize - $150 

2nd prize - $100

3rd prize - $75 

and 3 honourable mentions in each category.

#WriteOnContest 
#Writingcontest 
#rclas 
#Poetry #shortstory
Congratulations from all of us at the Royal City L Congratulations from all of us at the Royal City Literary Arts Society!

We are pleased to announce the 2026 Longlist for our 13th Annual Fred Cogswell Award For Excellence in Poetry.

Thank you to our 2026 Cogswell Award Judge Kevin Spenst! We appreciate your hard work and dedication.

Our finalists in alphabetical order:

📌Tabako on the Windowsill by Hari Alluri (Brick Books)

📌Long Exposure by Stephanie Bolster (Palimpsest Press)

📌A Bow Forged from Ash by Melissa Powless Day (Palimpsest Press)

📌Several Small Animals Enclosed in a Benedictine Monastery by Vera Hadzic (Anvil Press)

📌Devotional Forensics by Joseph Kidney (icehouse poetry | Goose Lane Editions)

📌What We Know So Far Is …by Conor Mc Donnell (Buckrider Books | Wolsak & Wynn Publishers)

📌Unravel by Tolu Oloruntoba (McClelland & Stewart | Penguin Random House)

📌Myth by Terese Mason Pierre (House of Anansi)

📌Wellwater by Karen Solie (House of Anansi)

📌Bonememory by Anna Veprinska (University of Calgary Press)

Thank you to everyone who submitted this year. We appreciate your support.

Congratulations! Our Top 3 will be announced in November.

https://rclas.com/2026-fred-cogswell-award/

#CogswellAward #RCLAS #poetry
#Canadianpublishers #canlit
#FredCogswell #bookaward #poets
#CogswellLonglist
Congratulations from all of us at the Royal City L Congratulations from all of us at the Royal City Literary Arts Society!

We are pleased to announce the 2026 Longlist for our 13th Annual Fred Cogswell Award For Excellence in Poetry.

Thank you to our 2026 Cogswell Award Judge Kevin Spenst! We appreciate your hard work and dedication.

Our finalists in alphabetical order:

📌Tabako on the Windowsill by Hari Alluri (Brick Books)

📌Long Exposure by Stephanie Bolster (Palimpsest Press)

📌A Bow Forged from Ash by Melissa Powless Day (Palimpsest Press)

📌Several Small Animals Enclosed in a Benedictine Monastery by Vera Hadzic (Anvil Press)

📌Devotional Forensics by Joseph Kidney (icehouse poetry | Goose Lane Editions)

📌What We Know So Far Is …by Conor Mc Donnell (Buckrider Books | Wolsak & Wynn Publishers)

📌Unravel by Tolu Oloruntoba (McClelland & Stewart | Penguin Random House)

📌Myth by Terese Mason Pierre (House of Anansi)

📌Wellwater by Karen Solie (House of Anansi)

📌Bonememory by Anna Veprinska (University of Calgary Press)

Thank you to everyone who submitted this year. We appreciate your support.

Congratulations! Our Top 3 will be announced in November.

https://rclas.com/2026-fred-cogswell-award/

#CogswellAward #RCLAS #poetry
#Canadianpublishers #canlit
#FredCogswell #bookaward #poets
#CogswellLonglist
Drawn to Words: Writing Through Art & Sound Step Drawn to Words: Writing Through Art & Sound

Step into Common Chords and discover where looking and listening can lead. Through a gentle guided meditation, close encounters with the artworks, music and imaginative prompts, participants will gather words, lines and stories inspired by what they see, hear and feel—culminating in a shared celebration of voices and perspectives.

Location: The Gallery at Queen's Park
Date: Sunday, Sept 27 | 3:30 pm to 5:30 pm

FREE registration via email to secretary@rclas.com

Open to the public • Ages 18+ 

• Writers of all levels and experience are welcome.

Common Chords Workshop Series

Facilitated by Paulina Constancia

A community collaboration with Royal City Literary Arts Society, and Arts New West.

#writing #rclas #artsnewwest #ekphrastic #NewWest #newwestevents
🌟Announcement: Our 2026 Write on! Contest Deadlin 🌟Announcement: 
Our 2026 Write on! Contest Deadline is extended to October 15.

https://rclas.com/2026-write-on-contest/

3 Categories:

📌Non-Fiction (1500 words max)
📌 Fiction (1500 words max)
📌Poetry (1 page single spaced max)

· Submission Fee is $10 per submission (one story or one poem) for RCLAS members, $20 per submission for non-members. 

Annual RCLAS Membership $35 a year.

🌟1st prize - $150 
🌟2nd prize - $100
🌟3rd prize - $75 

#writeoncontest #RCLAS #writingcontest 

and 3 honourable mentions in each category.
Take Two on the PIP slideshow! Tjisnone is better, Take Two on the PIP slideshow! Tjisnone is better, right? 🤣

THANK YOU to everyone that attended “Poetry in the Park 2026” over the summer. PIP PIP HOORAY! It was a delight to have the opportunity to celebrate our 15th year with you.

💜Your presence truly made the event special. Thank you with helping us fulfill our mission of keeping the literary arts not only alive but thriving here in our fair city. 

💜Our gratitude to both the City of New Westminster and Arts New West for their funding and support.

💜We want to encourage each of our open mic readers to keep writing and sharing. The world needs your unique voice and verse. Our open mic continued to reflect a broad spectrum of poetic stylings, AND a few poets shared their work for their very first time. We appreciate each and every one of you!

On behalf of the Royal City Literary Arts Society,
Janet Kvammen,
RCLAS President 

@artsnewwest @new_westminster
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