The Eden Mills Writers Festival presents an online workshop on Making a Scene: Using Visual Prompts to Create Rich Imagery in Your Writing, led by Emily Urquhart, Saturday September 7, 10:00 AM to 11:30 PM. Register here – https://edenmillswritersfestival.ca/writing-workshops/.
In this workshop, we will use visual art and photography as prompts to create rich, textured imagery in your writing. You will be guided through a series of slides coupled with specific questions about how and what you see. There is no experience necessary in writing or art to engage with these exercises. My creative writing students benefit from applying this illustrative technique to their fiction, poetry, and memoir, but it also helped my mathematical physics students improve their descriptive writing skills. All you need to participate in this workshop are your preferred writing tools.
$50 (save 10% if you register for more than one workshop.
Emily Urquhart is the author of three books of nonfiction including the essay collection, Ordinary Wonder Tales, a finalist for the 2023 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction. She is a five-time National Magazine Award nominee for her journalistic work and has won gold and silver. She lives in Kitchener, Ontario with her husband and two children where she is a nonfiction editor for The New Quarterly and teaches creative writing and science communication at the University of Waterloo. Presently, she is the editor of Best Canadian Essays 2025, forthcoming from Biblioasis.