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Meet the recipients of the 2025 Emerging Writers Prizes

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.

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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