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About Me
Ace Baker
Ace Baker is a writer, poet, and writing coach from Vancouver, Canada. His short story, “Victory Girl,” won the Storyteller Award, and his poetry has won the SIWC, PNWA, and Magpie awards, among others. Both his prose and poetry have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and National Magazine Awards. He has taught creative writing for more than twenty years and has seen hundreds of those he works with publish poetry, flash fiction, short stories, personal essays, memoirs, and novels (including award-winners). A collection of his short stories, How to Make a Killing Jar, is now available. He loves visiting book clubs (in person or virtually), giving writing workshops, and reading others’ amazing creations as well–maybe yours? Feel free to contact him at acebaker@fighttowrite.com
Praise for Ace Baker’s writing
“The Killing Jar”
“A wonderful story of love, heartbreak, and redemption, all sliding past each other in overlapping layers of depth and meaning.” —Diana Gabaldon, author of the Outlander series
“This story is a tour de force that left me breathless and awed by the indelible images it thrust into my awareness. It’s a searing piece of writing–terse, taut, and terrific in its brilliant intensity, with the poetic commentaries falling like sparks from a brilliant rocket. A stand-out winner by anyone’s standards.” —Jack Whyte, author of The Camulod Chronicles
“Plow Breaks Soil”
“Big Red Schoolhouse (the poem included in “Plow Breaks Soil”) keeps us up to our elbows in the muck of the moment…the poem is dynamic and dramatic in its details, as elegiac as it is realistic and beautifully sequenced though stanza and line…a choreographed chaos of feelings and action, dominated by a double dimension of obligation…” —George McWhirter, Vancouver’s first Poet Laureate
“Graphic and painful, but so wonderful to read. Really interesting and compelling story.” —Geraldine MacDonald, Blank Spaces fiction contest judge
“Menos Coca, Más Cacao”
“Now that I know that Ace is also a poet, it makes sense because I noticed the rhythm and the flow and the pacing.” —Rachel Laverdiere, editor Barren Magazine
My Story
I’m Ace Baker and I’m a writer and I’m not afraid to say that to anyone. But that wasn’t always the case…
First, there were the parents, Jack and Mary, who couldn’t BELIEVE that their son would work hard for high marks, get invited into LAW and PHARMACY, and decide to be a TEACHER, of all things, especially when the College of Education needed, oh, a 65% average to enter at the time and mine was in the nineties. When you’re from a poor family, and you don’t have a lot of money, it’s hard for them to understand why you might want to follow your passion instead of dollar signs. I think they finally saw my love for teaching, but I don’t think either lived long enough to see me make anything of my WRITING…
Then, there was that dragon of a writing instructor at the first university I got a degree from who put my work up on screen with an overhead projector, and proceeded to ridicule it and call me out by name as its creator, in front of a lecture theatre of about 400 STUDENTS MY AGE!
That turned me off writing for many, many years.
But it was an encouraging writing instructor–who was actually a writer himself, and not just a teacher–imagine!–who got me back on track with encouraging comments and an invitation to play with words.
What I learned is that you have to FIGHT off dream killers and INVITE in dream warriors like you in order to make the most of your passion for the printed page.
Sometimes, you have to FIGHT to WRITE!
Welcome, Word Warrior!
Ready to make your writing dreams come true?
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