Gordon F. Kells welcomed author Maureen Ulrich of Lampman on Wednesday, Oct. 19, to speak about her experiences.
Ulrich grew up in Edmonton and Calgary, but has been living in southeast Saskatchewan following university. She worked as a teacher in Lampman, Milestone, Estevan Junior High, and Pleasantdale until retirement in 2008.
Ulrich began writing for fun, outside of school assignments at a young age. She loved horses and her first stories as a young writer focused on this.
“I first started writing for other people when I had become a teacher, we would need a play for drama, and it was much easier to write something depending on the numbers we got out than finding something,” Ulrich explained. “So, I started writing plays for my students.”
“I was a non-athlete when I was young, so it’s kind of funny how I think about how my adult life has been spent writing about sports,” Ulrich told the grade seven and eight students during the presentation.
Sports became a part of her life, however, starting with a love of baseball brought on by watching her husband play with the Lampman A’s. Their eldest daughter would decide that she wanted to play hockey. In the 1990s girls hockey wasn’t very popular, so she played with the boys. Hockey is something that Robin has pursued and has led her to playing for the U of S Huskies for five years, acting as an assistant coach for five seasons, and now she has been named the interim head coach of the Huskies this season.
The experience of having a daughter playing what was thought to be a “boys’ game,” led her to write a series based on girls playing hockey.
“Girls hockey was not a big sport in the mid-90s, so I decided to write about it,” Ulrich said. “The first book, Power Plays, focuses on hockey, but it also addresses bullying. It’s about a girl, Jessie, who moves from Saskatoon to Estevan.”
The second book in the series, Breakaway, sees Jessie play AAA hockey, while dealing with teenage issues such as binge drinking and the consequences surrounding that.
The series concludes with Jessie’s experiences as a grade 12 student in Face Off, which follows Jessie on the ice and looks at the topic of dating as well.
“It took me eight years to get my first book published,” Ulrich stated. Explaining that of the book sales the publisher receives about 50 percent due to their efforts in proof reading, editing, and cover development, if sold in a book store the book store receives 40 percent, and Ulrich receives about 10 percent.
“I write because I love it,” she said. “I have stories inside me I have to tell. There are authors out there like J.K. Rowling who make good money through their writing, it is possible, but the majority write because they have a story to tell.”
Ulrich then spoke to the students about finding inspiration for stories and to write about places you know. Her topics vary greatly, having focused on hockey, for her first novels, the expanding to a play about “Snowbirds” who travel south every winter and find themselves living next to a hit man, working an idea for a historical fiction novel set in Newfoundland after visiting the area, and a novel based in Kenya after visiting the area.
“Inspiration can truly be found anywhere,” Ulrich explained.
Her most recent play called “Diamond Girls” was created after reading about a commemoration in Central Park in Regina for Mary Baker and the Saskatchewan women who played baseball during World War II in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) from 1943 to 1954.
The one-woman play, which starred Malia Becker of Regina, takes on the rolls of Mary Baker, Arleene Noga-Johnson, and Daisy Junor, who all played in the league.
Ulrich then took the time to speak with the students about how they can become better writers: “Read a lot. Any type of books that you like to read; read. Experience life. Pick a topic you care about. Visualize familiar places. Find other writers to share ideas with; it’s nice to have a group of people to sound things off of and get suggestions from because the other people in your life will support you, but they might not necessarily get it.”
Her visit to the school was enjoyed by the students.
For more information on Ulrich visit, http://www.maureenulrich.ca/
