Putting one foot in front of another is what Marty Chan learned many years ago, when as a child of hard working immigrant parents, who prioritized chores and help at the store over homework, became anxious that he wasn’t at the same reading level as his peers, leading him to develop imaginative strategies that have come to serve him throughout his successful writing career. His books, stage plays, radio dramas, television scripts and humour articles have taken him around the world from New York to Los Angeles to Galway to Beijing and have received many awards and accolades. In 2016, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts named Marty one of the 25 most influential artists in Alberta and last year he was the recipient of the Writers’ Guild of Alberta Golden Pen Award, presented to acknowledge the lifetime achievements of outstanding Alberta writers, placing him in the illustrious company of past recipients including W.O. Mitchell, Grant MacEwan, Rudy Wiebe, Robert Kroetsch, and Alice Major. 

Prior to 2020, Marty travelled extensively to deliver captivating creative writing residencies for students of all ages.  During the pandemic, he put his creative resources to work making it possible to shift to virtual workshops, and in the process ended up turning his basement into a full-on production studio as he devised innovative ways to continue to engage and inspire students of writing across the world through the computer screen.