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Author spotlight: Briony Merritt

Briony Merritt (she/her) is a writer and actor based in Halifax/Kjipuktuk, Nova Scotia. She is a founding member of BARE Theatre Co. and playwright for their current work-in-development, THE STATION. Briony recently completed her first feature screenplay, an intergenerational family drama set in Atlantic Canada.

“Blackfriars Bridge,” your winning entry for the 2022 Budge Wilson Short Fiction Prize, takes us back in time to a story set along the River Thames. What helped you inhabit this long ago and faraway space in your mind as you wrote?

Originally, this story began as a writing challenge between me and a friend! We gave ourselves two requirements: both of our stories had to be set during a specific time period and they each had to feature a young child or baby. From there, I settled on the backdrop of a London Frost Fair pretty quickly. These festivals occurred when a portion of the River Thames would completely freeze over during the winter, allowing Londoners to walk safely on the ice for a few days. I started by researching the different vendors and performers who would set up booths for the event – acrobats and puppeteers, tradesmen selling coffee and cider and freshly printed poems – which really helped me get a feel for the world my characters lived in. After that, I knew I wanted to combine the bright, expansive setting of the Frost Fair with a more intimate “backroom” conversation, and found a protagonist who could traverse both.

I know you have a background in film and theatre as well. How does your writing process for a short story compare to working on a theatrical script or screenplay?

I think I’m getting better at recognizing what form a story wants to take. My last couple of projects have been scripts (one for the stage and one for the screen), which meant they were inherently driven by dialogue and character relationships – with only bite-size visual descriptions! For these projects, I’d find myself scribbling down fragments of conversation in no particular order and then filling out the details of a scene around the dialogue. With short fiction, l try to force myself to write in chronological order to maintain a better sense of pace and voice. In “Blackfriars Bridge,” specifically, I was able to strip out almost all of the dialogue and enjoyed delving into one child’s perception of events.

If you could sit down for a conversation with any writer living or dead, who would it be and why? What would you most want to chat with them about?

Ooh! I’m a big fan of Tom Stoppard plays and would credit Arcadia as being a huge influence on the style of my current play-in-development. I would love to have a coffee chat with him about his writing career and how on earth he produces such consistent, clever comedy! However, I also read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke recently and was blown away by the scale and intricacy of the world that she built. I would be fascinated to sit down with her for a conversation about Strange & Norrell, as well as her 2020 novel, Piranesi – which is next on my TBR list!

What advice would you have for anyone who is thinking about entering Nova Writes in the future?

If you’re not sure, just enter! I had been hesitating to send “Blackfriars Bridge” out to competitions or journals because historical fiction doesn’t always seem to be as in-demand as contemporary stories. Ultimately, I submitted to Nova Writes with the hope of getting feedback on the piece, and received some very encouraging comments and useful suggestions from the judges.

What’s next for you in your writing journey?

Last summer I participated in a script development program where I completed the first draft of a feature screenplay called Love in Marginalia. The story follows three women (grandmother, daughter, and granddaughter) as they navigate a book hunt through rural Nova Scotia after a death in the family. I’m really looking forward to diving back into the script this month for some rewrites and editing!

For more about the Budge Wilson Short Fiction Prize, see our Nova Writes Competition for Unpublished Manuscripts.

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Simultaneous Submissions

The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS) administers some programs (and special projects) that involve print and/or digital publication of ‘selected’ or ‘winning’ entries. In most cases, writing submitted to these programs and projects must not be previously published and must not be simultaneously under consideration for publication by another organization. Why? Because our assessment and selection processes depends on all submitted writing being available for first publication. If writing selected for publication by WFNS has already been published or is published by another organization first, copyright issues will likely make it impossible for WFNS to (re-)publish that writing.

When simultaneous submissions to a WFNS program are not permitted, it means the following:

  • You may not submit writing that has been accepted for future publication by another organization.
  • You may not submit writing that is currently being considered for publication by another organization—or for another prize that includes publication.
  • The writing submitted to WFNS may not be submitted for publication to another organization until the WFNS program results are communicated. Results will be communicated directly to you by email and often also through the public announcement of a shortlist or list of winners. Once your writing is no longer being considered for the WFNS program, you are free to submit it elsewhere.
    • If you wish to submit your entry elsewhere before WFNS program results have been announced, you must first contact WFNS to withdraw your entry. Any entry fee cannot be refunded.

Prohibitions on simultaneous submission do not apply to multiple WFNS programs. You are always permitted to submit the same unpublished writing to multiple WFNS programs (and special projects) at the same time, such as the Alistair MacLeod Mentorship Program, the Emerging Writers Prizes, the Jampolis Cottage Residency Program, the Message on a Bottle contest, the Nova Writes Competition, and any WFNS projects involving one-time or recurring special publications.

Recommended Experience Levels

The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS) recommends that participants in any given workshop 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. The “Recommended experience level” section of each workshop description refers to the following definitions used by WFNS.

  • 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, and writing for children and young adults) 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.

For “intensive” and “masterclass” creative writing 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