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Home / 2011 / March / 18 / UBC Creative Writing students want your stories
Arts & Humanities

UBC Creative Writing students want your stories

March 18, 2011

New website to share Okanagan “literacy narratives”

A group of eight Creative Writing students at UBC’s Okanagan campus are working on a series of promotional and creative activities for Project Literacy Kelowna Society (PLKS), and are seeking stories from the community about the important of literacy in our lives.

They’re collaborating with Computer Science professor Patricia Lasserre’s students to create content for a new website. In addition to a short history of Project Literacy Kelowna, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, they are setting up a travelling road show to collect “literacy narratives.”

“Literacy narratives are stories about what you remember about learning to read, or how you helped someone else learn to read, or what literacy means to you,” says Nancy Holmes, the Creative Writing professor whose students are taking on this challenge. “They are usually wonderful stories!”

The students are collecting these stories at a variety of venues such as the downtown Kelowna library, and on March 25 at the Kelowna Community Theatre during the annual Word Ruckus event. They are particularly interested in hearing stories from folks 19 years or older, and who have experience working or being tutored at PLKS, although there is no limit to who can contribute.

“This is a great time to be raising awareness about Project Literacy Kelowna,” says Lee Hannigan, a third-year Creative Writing student. “They have had their funding drastically cut by the provincial government’s community gaming grants, but a local donor, MacKay LLP Chartered Accountants, is matching all donations made before May 31, up to $10,000. We want to help out.”

Project Literacy Kelowna Society, founded in 1986, was the first independent community-based literacy organization to be chartered in British Columbia. Project Literacy is a non-profit organization offering one-to-one tutoring to adults who face literacy challenges.

The UBC students would love to hear from you if you have a story to share about the importance of literacy in your life. For your story to be shared online participants are asked to sign a consent and release forms.

For more information about how your story can inspire many, the students welcome email at literacynarrativesok@gmail.com.

This project is supported by UBC’s Learning Exchange program. For more information, contact Nancy Holmes, Department of Creative Studies at 250-807-9369 or email her at nancy.holmes@ubc.ca.

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Media Contact

Bud Mortenson
Director
University Relations

The University of British Columbia
Okanagan campus
Tel: 250-807-9255
E-mail: bud.mortenson@ubc.ca

Content type: Media Release
More content from: Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies

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UBC’s Okanagan campus is an innovative hub for research and learning founded in partnership with local Indigenous peoples, the Syilx Okanagan Nation, in whose traditional, ancestral and unceded territory the campus resides. The most established and influential global rankings all consistently place UBC in the top five per cent of universities in the world, and among the top three Canadian universities.

The Okanagan campus combines a globally recognized UBC education with a tight-knit and entrepreneurial community that welcomes students and faculty from around the world in British Columbia’s stunning Okanagan Valley. For more visit ok.ubc.ca.

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