Mentorship pair Seyward Goodhand and Amelia Deizter-Dicks took part in our 2021/2022 Professional Mentorship Program. Their focus was on creative writing. Amelia worked on writing short fiction stories and incorporating Seyward’s feedback into every new draft. They also worked on submitting Amelia’s stories to a number of journals and magazines and attended book launches and networking events for writers together.
Amelia Deizter-Dicks is very proud of her aloe vera plants, the first of which is now a mother of two. She has had her short stories and poetry published in three of Creative Manitoba’s Youth Anthologies and is taking the mentorship program this year to focus on honing her short fiction. As a queer Metis woman, Amelia is interested in exploring themes of relationships between women and cycles of trauma. She hopes to be featured in anthologies and magazines this year. Amelia currently has no pets, but she does live with her long-term partner/lab assistant.
Seyward Goodhand’s stories have been shortlisted for the Writers’ Trust/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize and a National Magazine Award, and longlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize. Her first book, Even That Wildest Hope (Invisible Publishing), was a finalist for the Manitoba Book Awards’ Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction and the Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book, and longlisted for the 2020 Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. She holds a PhD from the University of Toronto on early modern sympathy and its participation in political authority.
Seyward Goodhand (left) and mentee, Amelia Deizter-Dicks (right).
My art will forever be changed after this program. I have learned so many valuable skills and I cannot wait to continue putting them to use.
It was wonderful to work with such an accomplished, professional emerging artist who was ready to hit the ground running and devote herself to a rigorous, invigorating schedule. It was an energizing, nourishing experience!
Hi, I’m Patrick Johanneson.
I write science fiction & fantasy. My work has been published in On Spec, Tesseracts 14, Daily Science Fiction, The Arcanist, Parallel Prairies, Alternate Plains, and Cloud Lake Literary, among others. I won the Manitoba Short Fiction contest in ’04.
I also take a lot of photos, many of them after dark (I particularly like getting shots of the aurora and the Milky Way).
You can find me online at https://patrickjohanneson.com/.