Food of My People: Toronto Launch, December 12, 2021

Please join us at the wonderful Supermarket in Kensington Market on Sunday, December 12th. Great food, brilliant readings, free admission, discounted books, and good vibes. This book has been a long time in the making and we are very excited to release it into the wild! Many thanks to my publisher, Michael Callaghan at Exile, my co-editor Candas Jane Dorsey, and all our amazing contributors. Proof of double-vaccination required for entry. Hope to see you!

There will also be an event at The Theatre on King in Peterborough on December 20, 2021, in the evening. Check the TTOK website for updates.

Coaching and Mentoring

I mentor fiction authors, helping with character, structure, setting, plot, dialogue and revision. I have worked as a substantive editor on novels and short stories and have helped both emerging and mid-career authors publish in Canadian and international literary and genre markets. I’m passionate about working with emerging voices and established authors exploring new territory. It’s work I’ve done all along, but the pandemic brought increased interest, and I’m taking on new clients for late summer and fall. Feel free to get in touch.

I have taught or co-taught creative writing for decades at Trent University, Loyalist College and at community and artist run centres and literary festivals including the San Miguel de Allende Writers Conference. My extensive experience as a workshop instructor, anthology editor and internationally published short fiction author have deepened and expanded my coaching. I have never forgotten how much courage sharing can require; my commentary is gentle, enthusiastic and focused.

Giuseppi Arcimboldo The Librarian 1566


Bio:

Ursula Pflug is author of the novels Green Music, The Alphabet Stones, Motion Sickness (a flash novel illustrated by SK Dyment); the story collections After the Fires, Harvesting the Moon, and Seeds, and the novellas Mountain and Down From. She edited the anthologies They Have to Take You In, Playground of Lost Toys (with Colleen Anderson) and Food of My People (with Candas Jane Dorsey). Her short stories and nonfiction about books and art have appeared for decades in Canada, the US and the UK, in award winning genre and literary venues including Strange Horizons, Postscripts, Lightspeed, Fantasy, Leviathan, LCRW, Now Magazine, Bamboo Ridge, The New York Review of Science Fiction and many more. Her books have been endorsed by luminaries including Matthew Cheney, Charles De Lint, Candas Jane Dorsey, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Heather Spears, Jan Thornhill, Jeff VanderMeer, and Tim Wynne-Jones.

Her short stories have been taught in universities in Canada and India, and she has collaborated extensively with filmmakers, playwrights, choreographers and installation artists. Pflug has won small press awards in the US from Dark Regions and Rose Secrest and has been a finalist at home for the ReLit, Aurora, and KM Hunter Awards, as well as the Three-Day-Novel and Descant Novella Contests. She is a Pushcart nominee. Her work has been funded by The Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts and The Laidlaw Foundation. Visit her on social media @ursulapflug

Testimonials

Ursula Pflug’s insightful and intuitive teaching methods helped hone my work. Her feedback transformed me from an amateur explorer of creative writing into a published author and poet. My work has appeared in several paying pro and semi-pro markets in Canada and the US, including a speculative short story that received several glowing reviews.
– Tapanga Koe

Ursula Pflug agreed to take me on for coaching even when the first chapters I sent her were barely readable. With immense patience, thoughtful suggestions, and meaningful pointers she guided me from nascent book idea to complete first draft. Her skilled coaching brought out the best in my writing style and gave me confidence in what I was writing. With Ursula’s help, I have created a novel I am proud of. I’m eager to continue to work with her on my second draft.
– Esther Vincent

Much appreciation to Ursula Pflug, who brought an engaged and wonderfully balanced energy to work with me on story evaluation and editing. She is candid, clear, and encouraging. I cannot recommend her enough and will seek her skilled and thoughtful guidance in future projects.
– Lynn Hutchinson Lee

I Read Canadian: Reviews of novels by Su Sokol, Nina Munteanu and Kate Kelly

Back in the aughts I reviewed (mainly) speculative fiction for print and online publications including the Peterborough Examiner, Strange Horizons, the Internet Review of Science Fiction and others. My feeling was that these publications provided higher quality exposure for authors than Amazon. Most of the reviews I wrote for The Examiner were reprinted in David Hartwell’s New York Review of Science Fiction and in this way I did my bit to raise the profile of Canadian speculative fiction south of the border. Authors I reviewed include Phyllis Gotlieb, Emily Pohl-Weary, Nalo Hopkinson, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Paula Johanson, Brett Savory, Mark Frutkin, Cory Doctorow, Karl Schroeder, Daniel A. Rabuzzi, Dave Nickle, Kate Story and others.

Below are links to more recent reviews of Canadian Fiction at The Ottawa Review of Books and Herizons Magazine. It’s nice to be back at Herizons. They published my short fiction decades ago, a literary story titled “The Secret Apartment” that I also illustrated, and a wonderful review of my first novel, Green Music, by Marguerite Andersen.

A Harsh and Private Beauty by Kate Kelly

This fascinating novel includes much in the way of insight into Capone’s Chicago and the ways in which young men may become involved in gangs when there is little else on the table. A fine book, hopping back and forth through time, showing us how even loving tightly knit families both coddle and thwart us, sometimes both at once.

Run J Run by Su Sokol

My review of Sokol’s literary sophomore novel appears in the print edition of Herizons Magazine. (Summer 2020, Vol. 34, No. 2)

So often in a profit-driven entertainment industry, whether film or literature, the impetus of the story is unravelment, but it’s clear Sokol wants to show us people who are doing their best, no matter what the odds.

A new review of Nina Munteanu’s latest science fiction novel, A Diary In The Age of Water will appear in Herizon’s summer issue. I’ll post more info about that soon.

CJRU Interview with Kate Gill

CJRU The Scope at Ryerson
All My Books: Interview with Ursula Pflug for Seeds (12-16-2020)

Here is the link to the edited version of my interview with Kate Gill at CJRU The Scope at Ryerson. Kate was a terrific interviewer, the time flew by. Thanks so much for having me, All My Books.

Inanna Fall Launch: Thursday November 19

Please join us at the Inanna Fall Launch on Thursday November 19th. I`ll be reading from Seeds, my third story collection. Seeds has received lovely reviews both at home and south of the border, including a starred review in PW.

I’ll be reading with Carol Rose GoldenEagle, Caro Soles, Laurie Ray Hill and Lisa de Nikolits. There will also be a live Q and A.

On Wednesday I was part of an event at WordUp Barrie, presenting with my colleague and dear friend Candas Jane Dorsey. Here is the YouTube VIDEO of our readings, the Q and A, and the wonderful Open Mic. What a delightful supportive community there is in Barrie. I read an excerpt from Judy, a pandemic story in Seeds. It`s one of my first published stories, appearing in the still-running This Magazine over thirty years ago.

And here is another recent Inanna video — I read from Judy here as well.

Enjoy the recordings!