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Meet the 2023 Elizabeth Venart Prize recipient

Roberta McGinn says winning the 2023 Elizabeth Venart Prize is the “pinnacle of delight.”

The Elizabeth Venart Prize was created in recognition of the unique barriers to literary creation faced by women and other marginalized genders. Through the prize, the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS) seeks to provide emerging writers with a unique opportunity for focused advancement of their writing projects and careers.

The prize comes with a $1,000 cheque, consultations with a mentor for the purposes of advice and feedback, and free enrollment in one of WFNS’s creative writing workshops.

“I’m grateful and utterly astonished,” says Roberta, 70, who is retired as a disability manager for the Workers’ Compensation Board. She lives in Dartmouth with her husband, dog, and two cats. “Now I don’t have to worry so much about having to go through December without a pay cheque.”

Since 2017, when she joined WFNS, Roberta has taken several writing workshops, so many that “I feel I’ve done a degree in creative writing.” She tries to write every day, and has been working on a fiction manuscript for several years.

With the supports received through the Venart Prize, she is hoping to concentrate on finishing her manuscript and, “oh, maybe getting it published.”

Created in 2021, the endowment for the Elizabeth Venart Prize was established through the generous support of the Venart family and individual donors. It is named in memory of Elizabeth Venart, a writer and mother. When she died in 2008, much of her writing remained unfinished.

WFNS continues fundraising efforts for the endowment—most successfully through the sale of Promptly: a miscellany of writing tips & tales from Nova Scotian authors. Beautifully designed and printed by Gaspereau Press, Promptly is available through the WFNS Gift Shop.

Speech language pathologist Trina Warner, a nonfiction writer, was the inaugural winner of the Elizabeth Venart Prize.

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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