Born and raised in the Yukon, Ivan E. Coyote is an accomplished author, poet and story teller. I first heard her several years ago on CBC and was immediately captivated by the her unique narrative voice.
In 2006, Ivan's first novel Bow Grip came out. It won the Relit fiction award and was named a Stonewall honor book by the American Library Association. Her recent collection of short stories, The Slow Fix (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2008), is reviewed by Judith Fitzgerald in The Globe and Mail. This volume was shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award.
Hearing her speak recently, I took her professional recommendations to heart. Some of her tips I would never have thought of, and the nuts and bolts advice was a great help as I embarked on my year of focused writing at The Writers' Studio at SFU. Giving public readings is a requirement for writers in the program.
At a recent Surrey International Writers' Conference, Ivan Coyote also discussed the writerly problem of getting down to work, offering some excellent strategies to help combat the tendency to procrastinate. I'd been thinking of doing Nanowrimo, and when she told us that she'd managed to finish a novel that way, I signed up for the experience. As Ivan had promised, the discipline of assigning oneself a daily word count proved valuable.
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