Sunday, August 16 – Port Union 

Join us for a writing workshop in Port Union with spec fiction writer Natalie Zina Walschots, author of Hench and Villain.

World Building as Set Building; or, holding up the universe with gum and duct tape

The allure of world building can be seductive for writers of speculative fiction of any kind, an excuse to create deep, robust lore for the fictional world you are creating. It can also be a time sink, and take you away from the much more important work of writing the actual book itself. This workshop is about how to balance world building and writing, background and storytelling, by focusing on the aspects of world building that really matter: everything your reader will be in close contact with. The premise of the workshop is that efficient world building has much in common with set-building and set-dressing, in that it only has to look good from specific angles, and otherwise can be made of balsa wood and hope.
Date: Sunday, August 16
Time: 2-4 pm
Location: Union House Arts, Port Union, NL
REGISTRATION: This workshop is free of charge, but participation is limited. To register, send a one-page sample of your work to: contact@riddlefence.com
Registration Deadline: August 10th, 2026

This workshop is funded by the Canada Council for the Arts Public Outreach Program. We are grateful for the collaboration with Union House Arts!

 

Natalie Zina Walschots is a writer and game designer. She is the author of HENCH (William Morrow, 2020), a novel about the mistreated and undervalued employees of supervillains — and the direct sequel, VILLAIN,  just released on May 19, 2026. HENCH was a finalist on the 2021 season of Canada Reads and was nominated for a Locus Award for Best First Novel. Natalie is the Narrative Director at Double Rex Studios, currently at work on their debut title, Thumbsplitter. Her work also includes LARP scripts, heavy metal music journalism, video game story bibles, and weirder things classified as “interactive experiences.” She is (unfortunately) the author of two books of experimental poetry: THUMBSCREWS, which won the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry; and DOOM: Love Poems for Supervillains. Natalie plays a lot of TTRPGs, participates in a lot of Nordic LARPs, watches a lot of horror movies and reads a lot of speculative fiction. She lives in Nova Scotia with her partner and four morally bankrupt cats.