Wendy Nelles has been a driving force behind the Write! Canada Conference. As Co-director, Wendy has indelibly stamped her trademark on the Conference. This powerful event has benefited from her passion, skill and integrity. Now, for personal reasons, Wendy has resigned and she will be very much missed. She leaves behind a rich legacy of excellence.
We want to acknowledge her contributions and accomplishments by looking back. We will hear her thoughts and desires as she has helped direct and administer the Write! Canada Conference.
We also offer our prayers and best wishes as Wendy begins the next phase of her life. We know her writing will continue to bless her readers and her abilities will be widely used wherever she invests her time and energy. We will always value her input for Write! Canada and The Word Guild.
God bless you Wendy!
Wendy Elaine Nelles is an award-winning journalist, writer, editor and speaker with wide-ranging experience in the corporate, not-for-profit and publishing sectors. Her news articles, features and profiles have appeared on the front pages of Canadian Christian publications. She holds an MA in Communications with high honour from Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois, as well as a BA in English and Psychology with high honour from Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ont.
Her work has impacted many of Canada’s writers and editors who are Christian, through co-founding The Word Guild in 2002 and directing many writing awards programs and writers’ conferences. Wendy has devoted nine years to establishing The Word Guild and building the professionalism of Canada’s Christian writing community, most of that on a full-time, pro-bono basis. She has filled a number of roles in the areas of strategic thinking, needs analysis, event planning, public relations, quality control and editing, plus spearheaded the legal procedures for The Word Guild’s amalgamation with the registered charity Christian Info Canada (CIC) in 2008. She continues to act as a consultant and ambassador for The Word Guild in her role as co-founder.
She has served on the leadership team of the God Uses Ink/Write! Canada conference every year since 1989. She has co-directed Write! Canada since the fall of 2001, and also directed several Write! Toronto one-day conferences.
Wendy was recognized nationally for distinctive achievement in her field with the Leading Women Award for Excellence in Communications and Media at an awards presentation in Calgary in 2006. Other winners in this category “for outstanding contribution to work and ministry in their areas of influence” are Karen Pascal, filmmaker (2002); Maxine Hancock, author, professor and broadcaster (2004); and Lorna Dueck, broadcaster and journalist (2008).
Wendy co-edited Hot Apple Cider: Words to Stir the Heart and Warm the Soul, a ground-breaking, 100 percent Canadian inspirational anthology by 30 Canadian authors who are Christian, all of whom are members of The Word Guild. The book has achieved Canadian bestseller status. In addition, the authors donated $500,000 worth of books to the relief and development organization World Vision – which has distributed 30,000 copies of Hot Apple Cider to people across Canada.
~To continue our review of Wendy's history with Write! Canada, we have repeated a 2009 interview~
Author and speaker N. J. Lindquist, and writer and editor Wendy Elaine Nelles have worked together as co-directors of the conference since the summer of 2001.
Patricia Paddey spent time with Wendy during Write! Canada 2009, to record her thoughts about a quarter century of conferences for Canadian writers who are Christian. Here is Wendy's story.
PP: Wendy, like N. J., you came to your first conference in 1988, and you haven't missed one. Do you have a favourite memory or anecdote you could share?
WEN: Around 2002 or 2003, soon after we had taken over the conference, a woman attendee stopped me at the end of the conference as she was about to leave. She had received a bursary to enable her to attend, and she wanted to express her thanks to me. She said, “Next to the gift of my salvation, and the birth of my three children, coming to this conference is the greatest gift I have ever received!”
She has gone on to publish at least three books for American Christian publishers and get a job in communications for a Canadian Christian charity. That statement touched me deeply.
PP: You've served on the planning committee for this conference longer than any other single person. What's kept you coming back?
WEN: I’ve been part of the leadership team for 21 years, and I keep motivated by the challenge of continuously finding ways to improve the conference. Over the years, the conference has changed significantly. In the past, the event was mainly education-focused, drew a higher percentage of wanna-be and beginner writers, had a very subdued marketing element (in typically Canadian fashion), and fewer opportunities for pitching proposals to editors and agents.
When N. J. Lindquist and I decided we had to take over the conference, we had three goals in mind:
a) Increase the attendance numbers, particularly through offering more professional development opportunities to keep the advanced writers coming back;
b) Increase the number of young adults and teenagers coming, thus training our next generation and lowering the average age of attendees; and
c) Increase the number of attendees coming from multi-cultural backgrounds, including from the black and Asian communities, to better reflect the Canadian demographics.
We've made progress on all three fronts, but we'd love to see more people coming from all three groups.
PP: Wendy, you’ve really devoted your life — for years — to helping build up Canadian writers and editors who are Christian: rewarding and celebrating them, creating the conditions under which they can connect, improve and grow. Why is this so important to you?
WEN: I’ve always been passionate about making my life count. I’m passionate about the Write! Canada conference and The Word Guild, because I know how much they would have meant to me when I was a student and young adult, longing to find someone to give me some guidance and encouragement. I can empathize with what it’s like to want to use my writing skills to bring glory to God, to want to get published, yet to lack the self-confidence or the contacts or the resources to know how to go about it.
I longed to find someone to mentor me as a writer, to give me that boost of encouragement I needed, and to help me plug into the writing and publishing industry. I never found an individual, but I found the conference. It was the only point of contact most of us had with other Canadian writers who were Christian.
We found a place where we were part of a community of people with similar interests and dreams. We learned a great deal from the classes, we networked with colleagues and editors, we found writing work through the contacts we made. And we made many good friends.
In conclusion, we say a great big
Thank You, Wendy!
May you experience God's richest blessings in all your endeavours for His Kingdom
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