The Women's Studies Association of British Columbia was a province-wide organization set up in 1974 to improve women's social status through the promotion, continuation and development of women'studies programmes at the post-secondary level of education and at adult community education centres. Soon afterwards, the association expanded to include high-school women's studies curricula. On December 11, 1978 the association incorporated as a society; it disbanded in 1980 due to declining support and lack of representation by members from colleges and universities.

The objectives of the Women's Studies Association were to promote women's studies in the province; to encourage research into previously unexamined aspects of Canadian women's lives, with particular emphasis on BC; to establish adequate support services for women at all post-secondary institutions throughout the province; and, to ensure that women's studies remained a part of the women's movement and that staff and students involved in women's studies were familiar with the aims and objectives of the women's movement.

A standing committee consisting of a coordinator, a secretary, a treasurer, a communications organizer, and a member-at-large directed the association. Membership included students and faculty from the province's community colleges and universities, persons from community service groups, and people with an individual interest in women's studies.

Working Women Unite was formed to create links between working women and the women's movement. The group focused on issues of women and work, and sought to create a relationship with trade unions that would further the position of women in the work force. Specifically, Working Women Unite sought to encourage the formation of women's committees within local unions, discuss strategies on how to organize in a non-union job, articulate feminist demands for working women to take to their unions when negotiating new contracts, and to recognize the value of all women's work regardless of whether it was paid or unpaid. The group also held conferences, workshops, and seminars on issues such as unpaid work, immigrant female workers, women in unions, women working in the home, equal pay for equal work, and the effects of video display terminals in the workplace.

Working Women Unite emerged from the British Columbia Federation of Women (BCFW) during its convention in 1977. During this convention the lack of representation for working women within the BCFW was addressed by a group of women, primarily members of the Service, Office, and Retail Workers Union of Canada (SORWUC), who met and formulated resolutions that were passed at the convention. It was not until 1978 that the group gained momentum with a broader base of support. Women from unions such as the British Columbia Government Employees Union (BCGEU), Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), SORWUC, Letter Carriers Union of Canada (LCUC), and Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), along with non-unionized women, and women in the home, became involved with the group. Structurally, Working Women Unite remained within the BCFW, a federation of women's groups in British Columbia working toward liberation of women through fundamental social change.

Writing in Our Time was a reading series organized by the Vancouver Poetry Centre in 1979 to benefit West Coast literary presses, especially Blew Ointment Press. Poets who read at the event include George Bowering, Fred Wah, Frank Davey, Daphne Marlatt, Victor Coleman, Gerry Gilbert, bill bissett, Robert Creeley, Ed Dorn, Ann Waldman, and Michael McClure.

Founded in 1980 by Fred Wah, David McFadden, and Julian Ross, Writing Magazine was for many years the key publishing organ of the Kootenay School of Writing. It not only survived the school's transplantation from Nelson to Vancouver, but became doubly important as a focus of the KSW's publishing activities, and crucial for KSW's community / network-building outside of BC. Its mandate of publishing established poets alongside younger ones - now typical of Canadian literary magazines - brought strong early work by writers associated with the KSW into print alongside that of well-known writers associated with the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E group. In this way, Writing helped create an international audience for Vancouver writing, and helped assure Vancouver a reputation as an important centre for innovative poetics in the 80s and 90s.

The editors of Writing were:

David W. McFadden, issues 1 - 5

John Newlove, issue 6

Colin Browne, issues 7 - 22

Jeff Derksen and Nancy Shaw, issues 23/24 - 28

Each brought a distinct approach (and format) to the magazine, but its key phase was from about issue no.9 (May 1984), when the KSW became established in Vancouver, to its final issue, no.28 (October 1992). At this time Derksen left Vancouver for Calgary, and Writing soon folded. The Derksen/Shaw issues, in particular, are still considered among the outstanding critical literary periodicals of the time.