Celebration of Authors, Books and Community (CABC), a joint initiative of the Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts and School District No. 46 (Sunshine Coast), brings professional writers and storytellers into Sunshine Coast classrooms to inspire and support student development as readers, writers, and storytellers. Since the program’s inception in 2007, more than seventy Canadian writers have visited Coast classrooms, working with thousands of students, providing them with the tools and inspiration to write and tell their own stories.
The program culminates with the publication of Coastal Voices, an annual adjudicated anthology of writing by budding novelists, poets, and essayists. At a yearly event, students take to the stage to read their works, giving our young people a voice, building confident and empowered youth, cultivating future generations of thinkers and writers, and ensuring a legacy of literacy. This project has been supported since the beginning by ZOOM and its publisher, Edmund Arceo, who has provided his time in designing the anthologies.
It is said that community is built on stories, and Coastal Voices is a beautiful expression of that notion. There is a transformative power in sharing a story that is heard. Beloved Ojibway author and storyteller Richard Wagamese, who visited the Sunshine Coast and our schools a number of times, said it best. “We change the world, one story at a time.”
Sunshine Coast students in grades K to 12 are invited to submit their work for the ninth edition of Coastal Voices, to be published in June 2019. Work can be submitted via classroom teachers or directly to John Lussier at Roberts Creek Elementary School.
Words | Jane Davidson
