Message to Canada's Literary Community
Dear authors, poets, organizers of literary festivals, publishers of books and literary magazines -- the Canadian writing community. Our tribe.
Thank you for supporting this campaign. Hello, I'm Janie Chang, BC author. I'm responsible for this website and for this campaign to make digital media literacy learning a requirement in Canadian schools. There is a general About information page, which I hope you'll read, but I wanted space here to share some thoughts with the writing community.
The world is on fire in more ways than one and many in our community, including me, are finding it hard to be creative. Sometimes I wonder if fiction and poetry are of value during a time when the world's fate has never seemed so dire. Worrying is my superpower and I just got tired of worrying, feeling helpless, and despairing over what to do.
The success of this campaign depends so many people - you, our fellow Canadians, politicians, school boards - and I have zero control over how people will respond to this campaign. I also have no way to accurately track how many people will write to their education ministers.
What I do know is that by focusing effort into this one issue, it somehow lessens my worry and guilt about all those other issues, because at least I'm doing something about one problem in the world.
It makes me feel better. I hope it supporting this makes you feel better too.
With much gratitude,
Janie Chang
Can you do more?
Apart from signing the Open Letter to members of the Federal government, please join in the letter-writing campaign to your provincial Education minister. Find your province (above) and send a letter (or three!) by post or via e-mail.
And then, please share this campaign with friends and other authors. Email, social media, whatever.
Other stuff I've worked on
In 2015, I founded and organized Authors for Indies, a completely volunteer-run effort for authors to show appreciation for independent bookstores. This ran for three years; it has since been rebranded as Canadian Independent Bookstore Day and is now run by the Canadian Independent Bookstore Association.
In 2021, I helped launch Changing the Climate Story. Along with other authors we petitioned the federal government via an Open Letter signed by 170 authors to strengthen the Bill C-12 Climate Accountability Act.
From 2021 to May 2026, I served on the Authors Committee of the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, and for the final two years as committee co-chair.