Northern Voices, Shared Stories
Paper Town Writers Collective is a free regional writing community created to champion Northern Ontario voices and the stories rooted in this place.
Founded by J.L. Fizzell in 2025, the collective exists to nurture creative practice, share regional work, and honour the many ways people live, write, and make meaning in the North.
At its heart, Paper Town is about connection — between writers and their words, between individuals and community, and between story and place. This is a space for writers at every stage of their journey, from those chasing publication to those who write purely for the love of it. Every voice belongs here.
Who We Are
What began as three people around a table has grown to more than twenty members in six months — with writers travelling from Espanola, Sudbury, Manitoulin Island, and Serpent River to be part of this community. For many of our members, Paper Town is the first writing community they have ever had access to.
We are poets, storytellers, hobbyists, beginners, and seasoned writers. We are people who have been writing in private for years and people who just picked up a pen. We are Northern Ontario, in all its complexity and beauty.
How We Gather
The collective meets monthly at the Espanola Public Library. Meetings are free, welcoming, and open to writers of all experience levels across Northern Ontario. In person and online participation options are available to accommodate the geography and accessibility needs of our regional community.
Quarterly public events bring the collective’s work into the broader community — celebrating regional creativity and creating space for Northern Ontario voices to be heard.
Northern Voices: A Home for Untamed Creativity
One expression of this work is Northern Voices: A Home for Untamed Creativity, an online publication dedicated to showcasing the writing of authors and storytellers from across Northern Ontario. Each featured piece is accompanied by a short bio — because the writer behind the work matters as much as the work itself.
If you write and you call Northern Ontario home, your voice belongs in these pages.
Submissions and participation inquiries are welcome at papertownwriters@outlook.com
The Belief Behind the Work
Paper Town Writers Collective exists because meaningful creative communities grow through relationship rather than performance. Because access to literary community should not depend on geography, income, or the stage of your writing journey. Because Northern Ontario has always had stories worth telling — and the people telling them deserve a room of their own.
More spaces are coming, built slowly and in conversation.
For now, Paper Town Writers Collective is home.
Join Us
Monthly meetings are free and open to all. Whether you write poetry, fiction, memoir, or something that doesn’t have a name yet — you are welcome here.
To find out when we next meet or to get involved with the Northern Voices publication, reach out at papertownwriters@outlook.com
Be sure to visit the collective directly via the link below.
J.L. Fizzell 