There are a lot of things I love about Winnipeg and Manitoba. We’re the home of Louis Riel, the nineteenth-century advocate for Metis rights. We were the first Canadian province to grant women the right to vote in 1916. This is the land that offered my great-grandparents refuge as they escaped the persecution of Mennonites in Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution. Nowadays, small, close-knit communities dot our country landscape between the farmer fields, and I love the connection I have here to my Mennonite heritage.

What I don’t love are the bitter winters with the wind blowing fiercely across barren fields, the terrible public transit, and the lack of niche community engagement that is so much easier to nurture in big city centres. As a story-telling nerd, it frustrates me that our comic con struggles to continue existing and our local writing community can be hard to discover. But fear not! Winnipeg’s writing community does, in fact, exist. I’ll show you where to find it.

The Manitoba Writers’ Guild

Yes, Manitoba has its own writers’ guild! The Manitoba Writers’ Guild regularly holds writing events in Winnipeg, many of which are private for members only or are open to the public with a fee for non-members. MWG memberships cost $60 for regular memberships, $30 for student or low-income memberships. The membership allows you to vote at guild meetings, have access to guild events, puts you on an e-newsletter list for writing events in Winnipeg, and comes with a Reader Reward Card for the McNally Robinson bookstore.

McNally’s Reader Reward Card normally costs $25 itself and gives you to a 10% discount on almost everything in the store. The 10% discount applies to already discounted books as well as items from their Prairie Grass Café. It’s really sweet and I use it regularly.

MWG’s writing events are great when they happen, but due to a lack of funding, the guild doesn’t hold as many events as it would like. I’ve still found the membership valuable for the newsletter, free access to a writing critique group, and the Reader Rewards Card. If you’re interested, you can find the guild’s website here.

The McNally Robinson Bookstore

The organization that holds the most writing events in Winnipeg is actually the McNally Robinson bookstore. First, McNally Robinson is the hub for local writers’ book launches. If you sign up for McNally’s newsletter, you’ll get an email notification every time there’s a new book launch. It’s a great way to get to know local writers.

Second, McNally also has a community classroom that hosts regular classes and workshops on various topics, including writing workshops and book clubs. Every workshop I’ve taken with McNally has been excellent. It’s another fantastic way to hone your craft and connect with fellow Winnipeg writers.

The Thin Air Writers Festival

Thin Air is Winnipeg’s annual writing festival. A week in September is set aside every year for the festival. This year in 2020, it’s happening September 17-27. You can visit the Thin Air website to learn more. They also release a free booklet every year that lists all the events, which you can find in any Winnipeg Public Library and at McNally Robinson during September.

The festival activities include afternoon book chats, evening main-stage events, and various workshops. Most of the book chats and other day events are free, but the main-stage events and workshops usually have an entrance fee.

Just as a heads up, a lot of the book chat events involve guest authors talking about and promoting their books. I went to a bunch of these last year hoping they were panels that focused on dialoguing about writing craft. Instead, I found these events were mostly authors promoting their books. There’s nothing wrong with that, it just wasn’t what I was expecting and so I found those somewhat disappointing. They’re still a great place to meet people and learn about new and local authors. Just go in knowing what to expect.

The workshops were fantastic, but last year I missed the main-stage event with Margaret Atwood (the tickets sold out like lightening). If you want to go to the regular event with Margaret Atwood, be sure to get your hands on a ticket as soon as they’re for sale!

Diaspora Dialogues

Diaspora Dialogues is a non-profit organization that “supports diverse writers to turn their craft into a career through mentorship, professional development and opportunities to publish and present their work.” They have a magazine, mentorship programs, and occasionally run TOK Symposiums in Winnipeg, Toronto, and Ottowa.

For those wondering, I have hunted for what TOK stands for on their website and I found no reference to the acronym’s meaning. If you know what TOK stands for, please share! Google tells me it’s likely “Theory of Knowledge.” Is our lovely internet-sorting vortex correct? My curiosity is quite piqued.

Regardless of what the acronym means, these TOK Symposiums are two- to three-day events that involve a variety of panels and writing workshops. I went to one such panel at the Winnipeg TOK Symposium last year and it was excellent. It’s a great place to learn and meet fellow writers. The last two years the Winnipeg TOK Symposium took place on the third week of November. You can check for event updates on their website here.

Writing Groups

It’s hard to find a definitive list of writing groups in Winnipeg. I think there are a fair amount, but most you’ll only find via word of mouth. Meetup is a popular site for organizing writing groups, but as of writing this blog post, Winnipeg only has two writing critique groups on there: one for poetry and one for speculative fiction. You can find them here.

The Manitoba Writers’ Guild also has a critique group that meets once a month on the last Tuesday of every month. It’s free for members and costs $5 for non-members. You need to reserve a spot though ahead of time. Usually you could find updates on the MWG website, but as of writing this post it looks like their website is under construction. You can contact the guild at manitobawritersguild3@gmail.com to inquire about the next critique group.

Beyond these three groups, you’ll need to ask the fellow writers you meet if they’re part of a writing group and hunt down those word-of-mouth meetings. You could even start a critique group yourself! If you do, please share it on something like Meetup so other wandering Winnipeg writers can find it too.

So there you have it: you can connect with Winnipeg’s writing community through the Manitoba Writers’ Guild, McNally Robinson, Diaspora Dialogues, and the occasional local writing group. Do you know of any other Winnipeg writing community hubs that I haven’t listed here? Please share them below! The more we share these community meeting spots, the more we can make the big small-town of Winnipeg a little more connected.