The Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Society (SCWS) is preparing for its third annual Art and Words Festival, which will be held at Gibsons Public Market from August 22-25. This year the festival also welcomed submissions from Qathet artists and writers.
On Friday 23 August, Northern Sunshine Coast based writer and musician Pat Buckna will be hosting a memoir writing workshop entitled: ‘Writing Memoirs with Pat Buckna’. The workshop will start at 10.30am in the Coastal Room of the Market at Gibsons.
Buckna’s writing is also included in the gallery’s main exhibition, which brings together visual artists and writers to create a collaborative work that will be displayed in the atrium of Gibsons Public Market.
“I worked with Roger Hort, a photographer from Texada Island,” Buckna said. “We took one of his photos of a bridge at Point No Point in Sooke on Vancouver Island and I wrote a little caption to go with it.”
Buckna is also a longtime musician and has a studio in Texada. He said music and songwriting have always been a part of his life, but writing a memoir was a way for him to explore his childhood, family history and then his experiences as an adult on a deeper level. His book, Only Children, a family memoir, was published in 2019 after he participated in the Simon Fraser University Writer’s Studio.
“It took me nearly 18 years to complete,” Buckna said. “I thought I would write a personal memoir that was more or less the backstory to my first album, which I recorded in the early 1980s when I was living up north.”
Buckna said that over time he wrote something completely different than he had imagined.
“Each chapter was supposed to be a song, and (the writing) was supposed to be the story behind the song,” Buckna said. “But after a few months, I ran out of material, and I realized I needed to go deeper into my own life, and as I did that, (the story) turned into a family memoir.”
Buckna said his research had uncovered some family secrets.
“I grew up more or less an only child, but I have four siblings,” Buckna said. “My parents each had two children from previous relationships and that’s why I called the book ‘Only Children’ because all five of us never grew up together; they grew up in separate families for different reasons.”
Buckna said his parents never talked about his siblings, but he occasionally met with some of them.
“When I was 13, we were on summer vacation (from Calgary to Vancouver) and one day we drove downtown to the Woodward store and my dad started yelling at a clerk who turned out to be my sister,” Buckna said. “That afternoon, a young woman knocked on the door of our hotel room and introduced herself as my sister.”
The memoir writing workshop, Buckna said, will last an hour and a half and is designed for people who have started writing their memoirs but may be a little stuck.
“I’ve been fortunate to have a lot of really good mentors and editors to work with,” Buckna said. “I run a writing group here in town once a week at the Powell River Public Library. It’s an informal group and we have a variety of different writers who come together once a week and do writing workshops together.”
Buckna said memoir writing is different from other types of nonfiction writing.
“Sometimes there are just a series of seemingly unrelated events in your life, and it’s about finding the threads or themes that connect those things together,” Buckna said. “One tip is to just start writing it down, not worrying too much about it, and then go back through and revise.”
One thing Buckna has learned about the writing process is that the revision process is at the heart of writing.
“Another important thing is not to worry about what you’re writing about and not to worry about whether people will be offended if they delve too deeply into the uncomfortable stuff,” he added. “If that’s what you want to write about, then that’s often where the truth or the core of the story lies.”
For the first time, the Art and Words Festival will open on August 22nd with a book and art fair where participants can sell their artwork and books.
Cathalynn Labonté-Smith, president and founder of the Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Society, said about 4,000 people came through the doors last year.
“The festival and the published anthology (Arts and Words) are a way to give local artists and writers from the Sunshine Coast the chance to be represented and show their work,” Labonté-Smith said in a previous conversation with the Peak.
The festival is open longer and features more artists, photographers, writers and workshops than in previous years, including teams from the Qathet region. To register for the memoir workshop with Pat Buckna or to view the Art and Words Festival schedule, go to eventbrite.com/cc/art-words-2024-3196309.
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