Ruth E. Walker
Ruth E. Walker
Ruth E. Walker is an award-winning and internationally published poet and writer, and playwright and editor. A Senior Writer/Editor for the provincial government, she teaches creative writing in workshops, retreats, and community programs, and maintains a freelance editing and writing service.
Ruth loves teaching and especially enjoys working with new and developing writers of all ages. For six years, she facilitated an ongoing writers’ workshop for the Oshawa Senior Citizen’s Centre. In 2007, Ruth was named one of four artists in residence to the Durham District School Board. She is working on pilot project with Durham Alternative Secondary School (DASS) funded by the Ontario Arts Council. An ArtsSmarts participant in 2006/07, Ruth worked with two Grade 11/12 English classes at DASS on a collaborative art and poetry project. Inside Out Minds was published spring 2007, anthologizing students’ poetry and artwork, and was selected for display at the National ArtsSmarts Exhibition in P.E.I.
Ruth’s very first submission won the Canadian Living magazine’s short story contest in 1996 and she hasn’t looked back since. She has twice won the Dan Sullivan Memorial Poetry contest, was a semi-finalist in the Chapters/Robertson Davies competition, and won 3rd prize in the prestigious Banff Centre Bliss Carman Poetry Award. In 2010, Ruth was awarded a writers’ reserve grant through the Ontario Arts Council and her postcard story, A Death in the Family, was one of 15 finalists in Geist magazine’s Literal Literary Postcard contest.
Selected publishing credits include: Prairie Fire, Contemporary Verse 2, LICHEN Arts & Letters Preview, River King Poetry Supplement (US), Rain Dog (UK), Canadian Children’s Literature, Canadian Architecture and Design, Canadian Living, The Toronto Sun, New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal, Oshawa/Whitby This Week; online at UBC’s Terry and Creative Science Journal, Words on Paper, and Regina Weese; several poetry and fiction anthologies; and one-act plays produced at Whitby Courthouse Theatre and StoneCircle Theatre, Ajax.
What Previous Workshop Participants have said:
You were my channel changer!
High school student, Oshawa, Ontario
You expected nothing but the best from yourself, and that’s what you expect from your students.
Workshop participant, Oshawa Senior Citizen’s Centre
