WFNS logo ltrmark sticky 100px
WFNS logo ltrmark sticky 100px

February 2025

Meet the 2025 MacLeod Mentorship participants

Program News

WFNS is pleased to announce the 8 writers participating in the 2025 Alistair MacLeod Mentorship Program as apprentices and mentors:

Jennifer Stewart

Apprentice in literary fiction

Manuscript summary: When two outsiders meet under extraordinary circumstances, their lives are upended by unexpected love, a reversal of fortune and the revelation of family secrets.

Carol Bruneau

Jennifer Stewart's mentor, Carol Bruneau, is the author of eleven books: four short fiction collections, most recently Threshold (2024), six novels, and one nonfiction book. Her novels include Brighten the Corner Where You Are, nominated for the IMPAQ Dublin Literary Award, and A Circle on the Surface, winner of the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction. Her 2017 story collection, A Bird on Every Tree, was a finalist for the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction. Her first novel, Purple for Sky, won both awards in 2001. She has mentored six writers in the Alistair MacLeod Mentorship Program.

Melissa Goertzen

Apprentice in nonfiction essays

Manuscript summary: Melissa is writing a collection of creative nonfiction essays exploring identity, sanctuary, and resilience. Inspired by her time in New York City during the upheavals of the mid-2010s, these essays reflect on transformation and rebuilding after loss.

Evelyn C. White

Melissa Goertzen's mentor, Evelyn C. White, is the author of Every Goodbye Ain’t Gone: A Photo Narrative of Black Heritage on Salt Spring Island (2009). She is also the author of the acclaimed biography Alice Walker: A Life (2004). A former reporter for The San Francisco Chronicle, she has been widely published in Canada and the US. The Nova Scotia Rainbow Action Program awarded her the 2021 Raymond Taavel Media Award for coverage of the 2SLGBTQ+ community. She was the 2024 mentor for the Oliver-Craig Black Writers' Retreat at Jampolis Cottage.

Roberta McGinn

Apprentice in geriatric sci-fi

Manuscript summary: Six old women, united by the bizarre ability to become completely invisible, band together to fight racism. Radical events ensue, and friendships formed.

Elaine McCluskey

Roberta McGinn's mentor, Elaine McCluskey, is the author of four short-story collections and three novels, mostly set in Nova Scotia. Her most recent work, a novel entitled The Gift Child, was released in March 2024 by Goose Lane Editions. Rafael Has Pretty Eyes won the Alistair MacLeod Prize for Short Fiction. Her stories have appeared in over twenty literary journals, including Room, subTerrain, and The Antigonish Review. One story was a Journey Prize finalist, another placed second in the Fish international contest in Ireland. She lives in Dartmouth. She has worked as a journalist, a book editor, and a university lecturer.

Nailah Tataa

Apprentice in sci-fi

Manuscript summary: Nailah's Charles R. Saunders Prize-winning manuscript is a collection of interconnected stories exploring afro-futurism and speculative eco-fiction.

Julian Mortimer Smith

Nailah Tataa's mentor, Julian Mortimer Smith, is a science fiction and fantasy writer based in Yarmouth. His stories have appeared in many of the world’s top speculative fiction venues, including Asimov’s, Terraform, Lightspeed, and Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. He has also taught writing to teenagers and adults and has worked as an editor of both fiction and nonfiction. His first book, The World of Dew and Other Stories, won the 2020 Blue Light Books Prize and is published by Indiana University Press.

Meet the 2025 MacLeod Mentorship participants Read More »

Meet the recipients of the 2025 Emerging Writers Prizes

Award News, Program News

Congratulations to the 2024 recipients of WFNS’s three Emerging Writers Prizes!

Each established between 2021 and 2023, these three prizes support writers as they advance book-length works-in-progress and as they undertake creative writing mentorships and professional training to advance their literary careers.

  • The Charles R. Saunders Prize (valued at $2500) encourages literary creation in speculative fiction and in nonfiction by emerging writers of marginalized backgrounds—in short, writing by someone like Charles R. Saunders at the beginning of his career.
  • The Elizabeth Venart Prize (valued at $1750) recognizes the unique barriers to literary creation faced by women and other marginalized genders—in particular, the lack of time and space imposed by systems of gendered labour and gendered childrearing.
  • The Senator Don Oliver Black Voices Prize (valued at $5000) recognizes the barriers to literary creation and recognition faced by Black and African Nova Scotian writers—who have been and still are marginalized by systemic inequality, including within Canadian publishing.

Nailah Tataa

2025 Charles R. Saunders Prize

Nailah Tataa is a ritual-based writer, artist, and facilitator in Kjipuktuk. They are currently working on an article for Visual Arta Nova Scotia and learning the craft of writing about curation.

Nailah's prize-winning submission is an excerpt from their collection of interconnected stories exploring afro-futurism and speculative eco-fiction.

Jaime Jacques

2025 Elizabeth Venart Prize

Jaime Jacques is a writer based in K'jipuktuk/Halifax. She studied journalism at Toronto Metropolitan University, is the author of Moon El Salvador, and has published her poetry in places like Rattle, Rogue Agent, Variant Lit, and Birdcoat Quarterly. She is a poetry reader for PRISM International.

Jaime's award-winning submission is an excerpt from a poetry chapbook-in-progress, her debut, which addresses themes of privilege, inequality, neocolonialism, trauma, and healing.

Natasha Thomas

2025 Senator Don Oliver Black Voices Prize

Natasha Thomas, a tenth-generation African Nova Scotian, is a playwright, composer, and theatre artist. A graduate of NSCC’s Music Arts program, she blends music and storytelling as director of The Beyond Imagination Puppet Crew. She is part of the Black Theatre Workshop program and has stage-managed for Dartmouth Players, Halifax Fringe, and Neptune Theatre’s 2023 Chrysalis Program.

Natasha's prize-winning submission is an excerpt from her play, Freedom Runs Two, a cantata for a puppet theatre, that tells the history of African Nova Scotians from slavery to modern days through the eyes of a child and his grandmother.

Meet the recipients of the 2025 Emerging Writers Prizes Read More »

Scroll to Top
WFNS logo ltrmark sticky 100px

Experience Levels

The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS) uses the following terms to describe writers’ experience levels:

  • New writers: those with less than two years’ creative writing experience and/or no short-form publications (e.g., short stories, personal essays, or poems in literary magazines, journals, anthologies, or chapbooks).
  • Emerging writers: those with more than two years’ creative writing experience and/or numerous short-form publications.
  • Early-career authors: those with 1 or 2 book-length publications or the equivalent in book-length and short-form publications.
  • Established authors: those with 3 or 4 book-length publications.
  • Professional authors: those with 5 or more book-length publications.

Please keep in mind that each form of creative writing (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, writing for children and young adults, and others) provides you with a unique set of experiences and skills, so you might consider yourself an ‘established author’ in one form but a ‘new writer’ in another.

The “Recommended experience level” section of each workshop description refers to the above definitions. A workshop’s participants should usually have similar levels of creative writing and / or publication experience. This ensures that each participant gets value from the workshop⁠ and is presented with information, strategies, and skills that suit their career stage. 

For “intensive” and “masterclass” workshops, which provide more opportunities for peer-to-peer feedback, the recommended experience level should be followed closely.

For all other workshops, the recommended experience level is just that—a recommendation—and we encourage potential participants to follow their own judgment when registering.

If you’re uncertain of your experience level with regard to any particular workshop, please feel free to contact us at communications@writers.ns.ca