Safekeeping

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Chelene Knight about her book, Safekeeping: A Writer’s Guided Journal for Launching a Book with Love (House of Anansi, 2025).

A unique guided journal designed to empower writers at every stage of their careers.

In Safekeeping, award-winning writer and author care specialist Chelene Knight offers tangible, structured guidance for new and established authors at different stages, including those not aiming for publication. This journal nurtures a new generation of healthy and supported authors, helping them avoid imposter syndrome, burnout, and the trap of comparing themselves to their peers, all while learning how to show up as their most authentic selves. Through a blend of thought-provoking writing prompts, tips, introspective exercises, and mindset-building activities, Safekeeping equips authors with the tools to construct their own roadmap to a sustainable and fulfilling creative practice.

The journal doubles as a valuable keepsake, documenting the entire publishing journey from the inception of an idea to the post-publication phase, ensuring writers can hold on to their experiences while planning for future projects. With warmth and compassion, Safekeeping equips authors with the tools to successfully bring their books into the world.

Chelene Knight is the author of the Braided Skin (Mother Tongue 2015) the memoir Dear Current Occupant, winner of the 2018 Vancouver Book Award, and long-listed for the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature. Her novel, Junie (Book*hug 2022) is winner of the 2023 Vancouver Book Award, long-listed for the inaugural Carol Shields Fiction Prize and a finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Prize for LGBTQ fiction. Her book of narrative nonfiction, Let It Go: Free Yourself From Old Beliefs and Find a New Path To Joy is out with HarperCollins Canada. Chelene’s guided journal, Safekeeping, is out now (Anansi 2025).

Her essays have appeared in multiple Canadian and American literary journals, plus the Globe and Mail, the Walrus, Writer’s Digest, and the Toronto Star.

Her work is anthologized in Making Room, Love Me True, Sustenance, The Summer Book, and Black Writers Matter, winner of the 2020 Saskatchewan Book Award. Her poem, “Welwitschia” won the 2020 CV2 Editor's Choice award. She was shortlisted for PRISM's 2021 short forms contest.

Knight was the previous managing editor at Room magazine, and the previous festival director for the Growing Room Festival in Vancouver and previously worked as a literary agent with the Transatlantic Agency. Chelene Knight has also worked as a professor of poetry at the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia. She is now a fiction mentor at the University of Kings College in their MFA program, and founder of Breathing Space Creative Studio through which she’s launched her Bespoke Writing Mentorships which are thoughtfully designed to help writers elevate their craft, shape and develop their manuscripts, and deepen their connection to who they are as creatives. Chelene is a certified mindfulness facilitator, and holds both a Laser-Focused Coaching Certification and a SHE RECOVERS® designation.

Hollay Ghadery is an award-winning Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024 and was longlisted for the Toronto Book Award. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, was released with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and is a 2026 Giller Prize finalist. Her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is a host on The New Books Network, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Founder of River Street, and the co-chair of the League of Canadian Poets BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. She is also a member of The National Book Critics Circle, The Creative Nonfiction Collective, and The Writers Union of Canada.