A New Voice in Residence

Welcoming Writer-in-Residence Anna Chatterton

This year, London Public Library and Western University are proud to welcome Anna Chatterton as our 2025–26 Writer-in-Residence. An award-winning writer and theatre artist, Anna has spent more than three decades creating bold, collaborative works for stages across Canada and the United States. Now, she is bringing her passion for storytelling and mentorship to the London writing community.

Anna describes herself as “predominantly a playwright and an actor and librettist,” someone who thrives on collaboration and cross-disciplinary creativity. “I love to collaborate,” she says. “I've co-written a lot of plays, and I like to work across disciplines and across cultures… investigating stories together.” It is a perspective she brings with enthusiasm to her residency in London.

A Writer from the Start

Writing has been part of Anna’s life since childhood. “I have a box full of journals that I wrote when I was younger,” she says. Poetry and journaling became an early way to understand the world.

Her interest in playwriting began in theatre school during a project that brought Canadian poetry to the stage. “It was just a really different way to create theater, and I was very inspired by that.” After graduating, she created new work with collaborators who shared her feminist perspective. “There weren’t a lot of female playwrights and very many female protagonists,” she recalls. “So I started writing, I think, out of defiance for that.”

Building a Sustainable Writing Life

Anna is quick to reassure writers who feel overwhelmed by the pressure to write for hours each day. “You can really move forward with a writing project by honestly just writing 15 or 20 minutes a week,” she says. “The biggest hardship is actually just starting.” She encourages writers to set short, manageable sessions — even on a lunch break — to “babysit the work and keep it alive.”

Finding inspiration also fits naturally into everyday life. Anna recalls finding the seed for her play Within the Glass during her MFA. “My teacher said, ‘Read the newspaper and find a story.’” On the bus ride home, she discovered an article about a fertility clinic mix-up that immediately struck her as a powerful dramatic scenario. “I was just so struck by this idea… that I ended up writing to investigate it.”

Encouraging Creative Confidence

If there is one part of the residency Anna is especially passionate about, it’s mentoring writers. “I love it. I wish I could do it constantly,” she says. She believes deeply in the creative impulse and in supporting anyone who feels drawn to write, regardless of their background. “I’ve met so many writers who are taxi drivers, bus drivers, cashiers… and they just still needed to write.”

She sees her role as nurturing that impulse. “I really like to inspire creativity in people,” she says. “To encourage and support people in that process and talk about what a meaningful life it is to process and filter what we experience in our lives through art.”

Workshops, too, are something she’s excited to bring to London. After her previous residency, she began noticing “a lot of similar themes… people were missing or didn’t know yet, didn’t have the knowledge yet,” she explains. These patterns helped her shape the workshops she hopes to offer, including sessions on sensory detail, character development, writer’s block, generating ideas, and writing dialogue, which is one of her specialties.

Opening the Door

Above all, Anna wants writers to feel comfortable seeking support, even if they don’t feel ready. “Sometimes people feel intimidated — ‘oh, a professional writer,’” she says. “But I’m really accessible, very kind, very understanding… and happy to talk about the creative process.” She also wants writers to know that she understands their challenges. “I am just a human who struggles just like they do. And I find writing hard too. And I am happy to talk about that anytime.”

She emphasizes that you don’t need polished pages to start. “Not everybody will have 10 pages to share,” she explains. “I’m happy just to meet and talk about writing. I’ve had many fruitful consultations with people who didn’t feel ready yet.”

When asked for the one piece of advice she hopes writers will take to heart, she doesn’t hesitate: “Read.” She encourages writers to read first for pleasure, then again to study technique. “The output is the writing,” she says, “but the input is the inspiration.”

As Anna begins her residency with London Public Library, she looks forward to meeting writers at all stages and helping them take the next step in their creative journey.