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Terese Mason Pierre juggles many jobs as a poet, librarian and Co-Chief Editor at Augur Magazine. At Augur Magazine, she has recently championed herself as programming coordinator for Augur Workshops. We discussed Augur Society’s workshop and how Augur Magazine’s presence cultivates Canadian speculative fiction.
Tell me a bit about yourself, your background and what you do at Augur Mag.
I have two roles. I work as one of two editors-in-chief at Augur Mag on the production side, publishing two periodicals a year. I oversee the poetry section of the magazine. I am involved in submissions and acquisitions. I curate and create the long list and shortlist that go out to our editorial staff for them to evaluate. I work with poetry editors to guide them and help them shape and edit the poems that will be in future issues of Augur Magazine.
My next role is head of programming. I work on Augur’s programming arm, researching, creating and evaluating programs at Augur magazine. So, in the past, I have done a workshop series. I did this in Fall 2021 and Summer 2023.
Most notably, I worked on Augurcon alongside Kerrie Byrne, our publisher and CEO. I worked on programming at Augurcon, helping develop the programming on the panel and other initiatives we were doing in that space. I’ve done Augurcon 2020, 2022 and 2023.
Aside from your role at Augur Mag, what kind of artist are you?
I am primarily a poet, but I also write and publish short stories and creative non-fiction. I’ve been publishing work since 2012, a little over 10 years now. The majority of my work is poetry. I do page poetry and not open-word poetry. I’ve been published in many Canadian and international online and print magazines. I also write short fiction very rarely, but sometimes I do. I write personal essays as well. I’ve also done book reviews. I’ve written articles and conducted a lot of interviews as well.
How does this year’s workshop differ from the last workshop?
In many different ways. First off, we pay our workshop host. We acquire this money through municipal and provincial grants. One reason the Summer 2023 workshop series was different from the Fall 2021 workshop series is that we got more funding. We applied for funding from the Toronto Arts Council and got over double the funding. We got about $5,500 last time; this time, we got $13,000. We could have more workshops because we had more money to hire people and save people a little more. That’s one way in which it was different.
Secondly, we were able to host more workshops. We also had different kinds of workshops and more specific things. So we did workshops like comics and artistic collaboration. We did workshops on translations. For those interested in becoming translators, we did workshops on how to market your work for literary and speculative audiences, horror writing and flash fiction.
Another difference is that we had more time this time. We had workshops over the summer. We had it on the weekends in July and August. So that’s a total of nine workshops, spread out and markets. It gave people multiple options to buy tickets.
How has the feedback been this year?
We ask people questions like, “Do you find this workshop organized?” and “Was this workshop enthusiastic about this topic?” Over 50% of people agreed. Some comments that people left said their favourite part was the writing prompts, the fact that the workshops were online, and they enjoyed the challenges the instructors presented. Some people said they didn’t want it to end; the price was affordable. Most of the feedback that we got was positive. Some people were more specific, and some people were more general.
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What were you hoping the participants were going to get out of these workshops?
We have two main goals, but also a secret third goal. The first is to more deeply and enthusiastically exemplify Augur’s mission, vision and values. Part of our mission is to provide creative opportunities for marginalized writers for Canadians as well as showcase their work on the international stage. So we want to provide our workshop attendees with opportunities, more creative opportunities, essentially, and more professional development opportunities as well, so they can continue to write and produce more work for the world, as well as build skills and give them resources if they want to expand or explore other genres or other speculative arts options.
Secondly, we want to continue to engage our community in impactful and purposeful ways. Usually, we do our magazine, and people can submit to that and read it. However, we can do more about fostering inclusive spaces and generating ideas and literature in Canada. Those are the two main goals of why we do this kind of program and why we do workshops.
A third reason is to allow staff opportunities to build skills. At some point, you start from scratch, learning things like event planning, direction and moderating.
Do you think that Augurcon, Augur Mag and these workshops are one of a kind?
Within Canada, specifically, our workshops present a unique opportunity for people to learn. I know that other speculative arts institutions, such as Clairon West, provide workshops for speculative arts creators. I worked at Clairon West for a bit, so the cost is prohibitive. The fact that we can offer free or low-cost workshops is great, and that allows more people to access our workshops. They are online so that people from across Canada can join. Something we’d like to work on in the future is having our workshops recorded.
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To answer your question, Augur workshops provide something new and interesting for Canadians in speculative arts and creative development in the arts in Canada.
What are your future goals for Augur workshops?
Every time I do the workshop, I learn new things, and I take these things and I apply them to the next series. So, the next series will be in 2025. The Augurcon in 2023 was unique and will not happen again. This will be even years in workshops or odd years; the workshops will happen again in 2025. This might show up by dealing with the schedules a little bit. I felt the two months were long because I was running the program. So I was on essentially for two months and managing the workshop from a distance for two months. I might make that, you know, maybe go back for one month. I might do that, but having multiple daily workshops might also be useful. I want to expand somewhat, or at least have more, and be more mindful, active and purposeful in choosing the workshop topics. We provided a great variety of workshops and creative workshops if we could do more professional development workshops as well.
Next spring, I want to run a smaller workshop series because we have some funding. I want to do workshops on grant writing, how to do taxes for writers, networking for writers, and things that are more than just creating beautiful words and stories. How to engage with the business side and the public side of writing — those are what I’d like to explore. I’m also thinking of an intensive workshop series, having one group of people meeting multiple times with the same host and looking at the same or similar piece of writing that sounds like what you do in arts institutions like Clarion West or Banff. I’m thinking maybe in the future, having a writing retreat, which will consist of more workshops but also just time to write.
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As a prose editor at Augur Magazine, I can wholeheartedly say that Augur Society is committed to expanding and nurturing Canada’s speculative literary scene. Having attended and hosted the workshops, the conversations in these environments are lively and engaging. Improving emerging and established writers’ knowledge of speculative fiction while also allowing these writers to build community amongst each other.
