Gwynn Scheltema's fiction, non-fiction and poetry have been published in Canada and South Africa, online and in print. Her poetry collections include Everchild (Aeolus House) 2023, Ten of Diamonds (Glentula Press) 2021.
She has received the Timothy Findley Creative Writing Prize, and the Julian Blackburn Essay Prize. Her work has placed in contests including The Toronto Star Short Story Contest, CV2 48-hour poetry contest, and the Spirit of the Hills Readers Choice Poetry Contest in 2021.
Gwynn co-founded and was a fiction editor for 9 years for Lichen Arts & Letters Preview, the first literary journal in Durham Region. Currently she co-hosts the literary radio show “Word on the Hills” on CFWN 89.7 FM, which has been on the air since 2013, and she volunteers in the arts as President of the Northumberland Festival of the Arts.
Gwynn worked as a writing freelancer under her business “The Write Connection” for 25 years, during which time she wrote hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles and blogs. She also spent 15 years working in various communications offices in the provincial government as a senior writer/editor and communications trainer.
As a partner in WRITESCAPE.ca she has facilitated creative writing workshops and retreats and helped many writers on their writing journey through coaching and editing services since 2008.
Gwynn writes from her forest home on the shores of Lake Seymour on the Trent Severn Waterway system in Ontario, but she was born and raised amid drought and dust and civil war in Southern Africa. Often her writing is inspired by the people, moods, and landscapes of these two contrasting places.
Gwynn finds solace and inspiration in the natural world, in the sensory and the sensual. Even when she explores human sensibilities—longing, guilt, gratitude, regret, love—the undercurrents of the physical world run deep.
EVERCHILD: “There are toads in my family ... and mango memories, an olive-brown queen coiled in a warm sun.” Compelling and heartbreaking. The poems filled with longing, pain, a sensuous observation of a journey looking to repair itself. These poems can crack a hard shell. It is worth one’s own contemplation.
TEN OF DIAMONDS: I was much impressed with the whole collection. All the poems in the book evoke other places, persons and times with their verbal music, and never sound forced or merely quaint. The notes at the back are luxurious “value added.”
EVERCHILD: Gwynn Scheltema writes from every aspect of her wide-lived life with every facet of her bold, courageous, female voice. She gives us everything, everywhere, all at once not without restraint and discernment, but with an exuberant acceptance of self and a tender vulnerability that includes her reader, always, in a gesture of welcome. A startling debut. A poet to watch.
TEN OF DIAMONDS: It’s stunning! Love the cover and the entire presentation, so crisp, and what beautiful paper stock. Every poem so creatively distinct from the next. Brilliant work by an extraordinary poet.
EVERCHILD: In Everchild, Gwynn Scheltema gives us poetry that is clear-headed and clarifying, poetry that both describes experience and creates it. … Her poet’s palette is varied and far-reaching – she can bring Molly Malone back to life as well as take us into the heartland of Zimbabwe. There’s a lifetime in these poems, stories to be told about people and places and the state of the human heart, whether grieving or skipping to the beat of its own music.
TEN OF DIAMONDS: “Song of the Sixties” will, I expect, trigger multiple earworms for anyone who reads it, not to mention a flood of memories for the generation that grew up in the sixties.
Literary CV Gwynn Scheltema
Gwynn Scheltema is a poet, award-winning fiction writer, creative writing workshop facilitator and coach. Her work has been published in numerous journals, magazines and anthologies in Canada and South Africa, online and in print. Her poetry collection, Everchild, was released by Aeolus House in 2023 and her chapbook Ten of Diamonds in 2021 by Glentula Press.
Gwynn co-founded, edited and published Lichen Arts & Letters Preview, the first literary journal in Durham Region; she is a radio host on CFWN 89.7FM for the literary show “Word on the Hills”, worked as a writing freelancer under her business “The Write Connection”, and was a senior writer/editor for the Provincial Government for 15 years.
Gwynn grew up on the dry savanna of Zimbabwe and now lives in a forested lakeside home in Canada. Often her writing is inspired by the people, moods, and landscapes of these two contrasting places.
Gwynn finds solace and inspiration in the natural world, in the sensory and the sensual. Even when she explores human sensibilities—longing, guilt, gratitude, regret, love—the undercurrents of the physical world run deep.
SELECTED RECENT PUBLISHING CREDITS
POETRY
Chapbooks and Collections
Poetry Anthologies
Journals and magazines, online and in print
Awards
NON-FICTION
Books, magazines, media online and in print
FICTION
Journals, anthologies and magazines, online and in print
Awards
READINGS
Invited poet:
Open-mic includes: Art Bar Series (Toronto), Rivoli (Toronto); Library Poetry Series (Toronto); Gladstone Hotel Poetry Series (Toronto), Black Swan Tavern (Toronto), Stephen Leacock House, (Orillia); Trent Writers Reading Series (Peterborough)
WRITING CONFERENCE FACILITATOR/PRESENTER
WRITING RELATED VOLUNTEER ACTIVITIES
WRITING ORGANIZATIONS
WRITING RELATED EDUCATION
WRITING RELATED EMPLOYMENT