Award-winning novelist Janika Oza returns to share her skills with SCS learners.
Before she was an award-winning author, Janika Oza was an SCS creative writing learner. Now she’s coming full-circle and bringing her skills and knowledge back to SCS as one of the school’s newest creative writing instructors.
A passion for writing has been with Oza as long as she can remember. “It’s been my way of understanding the world, of processing and searching for answers,” she shares.
While there was a time she couldn’t picture herself writing professionally, she was always working on stories (and eventually her novel manuscript) on the side of her coursework and jobs. And she was always a reader.
“What has always been inspiring to me is reading, the power and possibility of books. I also found it not only inspirational but instructive when I began meeting other emerging writers who were in similar positions to me—just trying to figure out how to write alongside everything else—as well as more established authors who offered guidance and support,” she says.
“Today, these things remain true; my reading practice and my community continue to be sources of inspiration and belief for my work.”
She doesn’t remember thinking about publishing her work or teaching at the time, but Oza says she does clearly remember the excitement of her first days as a learner at SCS.
“I was working full time in a job that was both entirely unrelated to writing and also extremely draining for me when I decided to take the Writing the Novel: Introduction course at SCS, which was offered on the UTM campus. So on Saturday mornings I would wake up early and take the bus out to Mississauga for the class, and I remember feeling so energized on the bus ride up, just amazed that I was getting to do something I loved and was passionate about, something that fed me in a way that my work did not,” she explains.
“I was so excited to learn and to be in a room with other working writers and to just get to dedicate half my Saturday to this thing I loved.”
It was in that classroom that the idea for the national-bestselling novel, A History of Burning (named a best book of 2023 by The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Globe and Mail, CBC Books, and more) came to Oza.
“I remember that there was only one class remaining and the final assignment was to hand in the opening thirty or so pages of a novel, and it was while I was working on a different novel for that assignment that the idea came to me,” she says.
“I’m sure a lot went into the timing of that inspiration—the other parts of my life, everything I was reading and learning and experiencing personally—but I also believe that committing to my writing on a weekly basis and developing a writing practice over the course of the semester had something to do with it, too. I think those habits and skills nourished the ground, so that when a seed of an idea dropped down, it had a fertile place to grow.”
Oza’s motivation to teach was in part handed down to her through her family. “My grandmother was a teacher and I’ve always felt connected to her in this intangible way, I think the desire to teach is in my blood,” she shares.
“The first couple of times that I had the chance to teach creative writing and lead writing workshops were so powerful for me—there really is a magic in the writing workshop, it can be such a profound space and the act of guiding someone in shifting the work on the page closer to the vision that lives in their mind is so thrilling to me. I also find teaching deeply challenging in a way that makes me expand my own thinking, which then translates into my own writing projects. I just love working with students and connecting over craft and content; I find it so hopeful and moving.”
One of the writing hurdles Oza hopes to help the learners in her creative writing classes overcome is self-doubt. She recalls how as an emerging writer, she felt that no one was waiting for her work, and being published seemed impossible.
“There were times when that self-critic, that voice of doubt, took over and made it hard to keep writing. But of course I had to find a way through, and one of the tools that helped me was meeting other writers, new and established, to learn from and support each other, and also developing writing practices that felt sustainable to me and that I could fall back on even when I was doubtful about my work,” she explains.
“A classroom is a writing community, and I want to emphasize that in every space I teach in, that these connections can exist beyond the course and can really support and foster the work of writing. In my class we also spend some time thinking through how to develop a sustainable writing practice for yourself, which is a skill that I hope students will carry beyond the classroom. I want to nurture a sense of belief in the writing itself that is unconnected to publication or external validation.”
If she could give one piece of advice to someone thinking about taking their first SCS creative writing course, Oza says they should remember they can learn as much from their fellow students as they do from their instructor.
“You can learn as much from workshopping other writers’ work as you can from receiving feedback on your own. We’re told that writing is a solitary act, but I firmly believe it’s also a communal one,” she insists.
As for learners who might be specifically considering taking part in one of Oza’s Creative Writing: Introduction classes, she says new writers are more than welcome:
“I welcome writers who have never studied writing before, writers from all backgrounds and careers. As someone who didn’t follow a traditional path of studying creative writing, I found (and continue to find) it encouraging and inspiring to meet other writers from non-traditional backgrounds who are just as committed to their craft as I felt. As long as you’re energized at the prospect of getting to focus on your writing at least once a week and open to learning from the group, this class is for you.”