Interview – Rixa Joy, Toronto Writers’ Centre
Rixa Joy and colleagues are creating one of Canada’s most exciting creative communities, right in the heart of Toronto. Rixa explains more about the centre and how it helps writers to write.
Rixa, tell us about Toronto Writers’ Centre…
Inspired by The Writers’ Room in NYC, The Toronto Writers’ Centre has been a part of Toronto’s literary landscape since 2006. It aims to offer a quiet place to work for writers, but has recently expanded to offering writing workshops, open mics, networking events and more. I am one of two operating owners of the TWC. I joined the TWC as a member in 2021 as a means to focus on my writing projects and helped to save the centre in the summer of 2023. We are now in a new space and I am settling back into using the centre for my first collection of short stories.
Who uses the space and what for?
We have many different writers who use us to write fiction, plays, non-fiction, young adult, horror and so much more. We also have larger writer projects that rent out our boardroom to write television series and movies. We welcome anyone serious about improving their writing or their writing creativity.
How does being part of a writing community like TWC help writers?
Our main area of focus is offering a quiet, dedicated space to write. At home, there can be many distractions, notably kids, cats and laundry, that can distract us from being able to focus on our writing. TWC is a place where you can leave everything at home and find focus and be productive.
How has running the centre helped you with your own writing?
The first few months of taking on the centre, moving locations and trying to keep it going after a scare of it closing, made finding time to write very hard for me. However, as the community started to form around it and I was interacting with other writers, I started to revisit my goals, stories and practice. It is amazing what a community can do for your focus. Not to mention, having a quiet space to write in with so much creativity flowing through it is a major help to staying on track.
Tell us about your events…
We host a variety of events, some within the centre itself and some at a local bar called Hail Mary. At the centre we tend to host more workshops and collective writing experiences. Our most popular event is called Night Write, where we turn off all the overhead lighting, add LED candles to each workstation and settle in for a four-hour writing session. The attendees keep coming back as they find it to be their most productive writing time. We also host prompt-based workshops and some educational workshops on grants and workshopping; we hope to expand these in the fall. Our social events like our Open Mics and Salon Series offer a more laid-back approach to connecting with the local writing community and are held at Hail Mary bar. We aim to do one or two of these events per month, and they are a great opportunity to mingle with the TWC community.
Tell us about the physical space…
We have a nice boardroom that is often rented out for writers’ rooms, and we have had some pretty major television shows and movies written in the room. There’s an energy in the space that writers tend to feel and tap into; our boardroom stands out for this purpose.
What are your long-term plans for the centre?
Keep it open! Running a business in the city of Toronto that has an overhead like a lease is a large undertaking, but we continue to scrape by and keep the lights on. That is the small goal. The larger goals are to continue to expand the types of workshops and events we offer to grow our non-membership community, while offering the space to full-time members and continuing the co-working aspect of the centre. Ultimately, we want to help make people better writers, help writers connect with one another, and offer a quiet, dedicated space for people to write in.
How can people get involved?
There are three ways you can get involved.
Join us as a member! Members get 24/7 access to the writing space and free attendance or discounts to our workshops and events. This option is great for someone deep in the trenches of a project looking for a place to get it all done in a productive and quiet environment.
Attend a workshop or event. We post a monthly calendar of what we have going on. There are many different workshops and events to discover.
Facilitate with us. We are always looking for people with knowledge in the writing world to help share and guide other writers. Email us with a bit about yourself, a workshop idea or two you’d like to run, and we will be in touch.
Learn more about Toronto Writers’ Centre here, and visit the Toronto Writers’ Centre Instagram here.