There were three people of colour in that room yesterday. All the presenters were white, and all of them were women. Festivities opened with an acknowledgment of Musqueam land.
They mentioned the UBC MFA program about a hundred times, as if it was some kind of talisman for getting a book advance. On the basis of what I see regarding Canadian publishing, they may fucking well be right.
There was some good advice and parts were interesting, but it was almost completely and nearly totally an expensive waste of time with 1.5 hours of transit on either end.
It seems obvious the traditional pipelines for books and publishing are collapsing slash drying up.
I’m still going to try to find an agent, but honestly I have even less faith in that now than I did before. Upsun is too niche. I know it and I’m going to suck it up. Nothing happened in that room to make me want to stop writing.
