Writer-in-Residence!

Guess who the new writer-in-residence is at Riverdale High School in Pierrefonds?

You're looking at her!

Today was my first day working with -- and meeting -- one of Mrs. Scott's Grade Nine English classes at Riverdale. There are 32 students in the group, and even the school principal, Mr. Rampersad (who loves to read!), came to listen to my introductory talk. FUN!

I'll be making seven visits to the school thanks to a Blue Metropolis Literary Foundation project called Libres comme l'art. Other organizations such as the Conseil des arts de Montréal and Cré are also involved in making the project possible.

Working on Libres comme l'art means I get to do something I love to do: write a book. But what's extra special is that I'll be writing this book with the help of 32 special assistants -- Mrs. Scott's students!

I had a little over an hour with the students today and we reviewed some of the basics -- how important it is for writers to read and write, why stories matter, and why some stories give people like me (and hopefully you!) goosebumps.

It looks like one of the characters in our story is going to be autistic. This means that the students and I will be researching autism and what it feels like to be an autistic student in our school system.

As you can imagine, interesting things happen when you put together a lot of brains. A student named Shayne told us that over the summer, he worked as a swimming instructor and some of his students were autistic. I'm hoping we'll learn more about Shayne's experience. Hamza suggested we include a hate letter in our story -- similar to a hate letter that made the news a few weeks ago when it was sent to the mom of an autistic child in Ontario. Good thinking, Hamza! Sabrina is in the cadets and she told us that there, autistic youngsters have integration aides or shadows -- which made me think it would be great to include an integration aide in our story. And I want to tell you about another student named Shane (no y in this one's name) who came up with a line that I thought would make a great opening line in a book. Here it is: "You can look at it from a distance, but don't touch!" Doesn't that line intrigue you? Which is, of course, what an opening line has to do.

Do I sound excited about being the writer-in-residence at Riverdale? It's because I am! I can hardly wait to read the story that comes out of this seriously cool project!