Creative nonfiction writer, poet, essayist, teacher, manuscript consultant, and editor Betsy Warland was born in the United States in 1946. Betsy immigrated to Canada in 1973, becoming a citizen in 1980. Warland has published eleven books of creative nonfiction and poetry.
Dedicated to emerging writers, Betsy is the former director of The Writer’s Studio, part of Simon Fraser University’s Writing and Communications Program (2000 -2011). She currently directs and is
a mentor in her own five-month manuscript development program, Vancouver Manuscript Intensive. Betsy is on faculty in both programs.
An active member of The Writers’ Union of Canada, Betsy serves on the National Council and is the co-founder, along with Myrna Kostash, of the Creative Nonfiction Collective. Her archives are in the
National Library of Canada.
Perhaps most known for her language-focused writing and ways of working with silence, Betsy finds as much meaning in scoring blank space on the page as she does in inscribing written language. The
unsayable, the secreted, the unknowable: these are her obsessions –how we encounter them in lover relationships, family, a homophobic society, a mono-truth society and the inner work of spiritual practice.
Currently, Betsy is working on a lyric prose manuscript “Oscar of Between”.