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Winners of the 2023 Nova Writes Competition

Congratulations to the four prize-winners in the 2023 Nova Writes Competition for Unpublished Manuscripts!

Budge Wilson Short Fiction Prize
Andrea Reynolds, “Rhythms of Here and Gone”

H.R. (Bill) Percy Short Creative Non-Fiction Prize:
Elizabeth Collis, “Ties that Bind”

Joyce Barkhouse Writing for Children Prize:
Jennifer Overton, “Parish Island”

Rita Joe Poetry Prize:
Nicholas Selig, “In the Twilight House”

Our deep gratitude to the readers and judges of this years’ competition—and congrats also to the remaining finalists: Bradley Ferguson, Jessica Drohan-Burke, Tara G. Harris, and Victor Maddalena (for the Budge Wilson); Mary Dodd, Heather Jenkins, James MacDuff, and Scott Neilson (for the H.R. Percy); Kyle Cormier and William Pitcher (for the Joyce Barkhouse); and Teigen Bond (for the Rita Joe).

The winners in each Nova Writes category will be invited to read from their winning compositions at the Celebration of Emerging Writers—alongside this year’s MacLeod Mentorship graduates—on Tuesday, May 30 (6:30pm), at Café Lara (2347 Agricola St, Halifax).

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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