Author Spotlights

Janet Barkhouse is a member of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia, a fiction writer, a children’s writer, and a poet. In the following post, she discusses her influences, how she got started as a writer, and all the things she loves about living in Nova Scotia. Barkhouse’s debut full-length poetry collection,Salt Fires, will be published by Pottersfield Press this fall.

How long have you been writing? What drew you to writing in general, and poetry, fiction, and children’s literature in particular? 

I’ve been writing since childhood, largely because of my writer mother’s modeling, or perhaps even the way my genes were shaped; Noah Webster was my mother’s ancestor. I published poems in Loyola College’s journal Amphora when I was going to school in Montréal—had written poems all through my adolescence, as many of us do. One of my professors, smiling, said to me, “Janet, an image is not a poem, you know,” and I thought, “I guess I’m not very good at this—I better stick to acting.” So I “went into” theatre, and acted for years. Still I wrote—plays for my elementary-school-age children, published a poem here, a story there. When I shifted gears and became an educator, I wrote curriculum, essays, a play for students in Drama Club. After I retired, Carole Glasser Langille, whom I’d invited to my classes, phoned me to ask if I’d like to take a poetry workshop she was offering near my home. That was in 2006, and I was smitten. I’ve worked hard to learn how to share ineffable experience in words, and I’m still learning. It has seemed natural to write for children, too, when asked; I remember my own childhood vividly, then had children, then taught adolescents. The stories I’ve had published (Room, CBC) were like poems, riffs on experience. And it’s poems I feel most compelled to write, unless I have a deadline for something. Poems are their own deadline.

What do you think is changing in poetry these days? 

Poetry is always the same in its rootstock; the branches grafted on that stock change according to the era and its paradigms. My formal education was almost entirely based in the work of British Isles men. My English Master’s thesis (the word “Master” says it all, doesn’t it?) was called “The Developing Sense of History in the Two Cleopatra’s of Samuel Daniel.” My favourite poets were Elizabethan, Metaphysical, Romantic. The world view of those poets’ times was hierarchical, with God and His Angels at the helm. His Plan and His Reasons lent order to the chaos of daily life. More and more, that world view is being reshaped into that of Existentialism, where life has value, but no meaning, as in Camus’ L’Étranger. In fact, even the sense of life’s intrinsic value is being eroded. We live in interesting times! Poetry has always been the canary in the coal mine; poets are by nature sensitive to climate change, so to speak. Poems today reflect the chaos we seem to be approaching, and the old order of rhythm, rhyme, stanza, meaning, has shifted to reflect a world with no overview, no unbreakable rules, and only subjective meaning. My own poems befit my place in society, showing my background of meaning and structure, but reaching out to touch the face of chaos. “Accessible,” critics would call it.  

What do you love about living in Nova Scotia?

What don’t I love about living in Nova Scotia! I love the land. Perhaps this is because I spent my sixth through ninth years playing in the wilds near the Dingle Tower in Jollimore—skating on the Frog Pond, climbing Mount Misery, dabbling in the brook across the road from our flat, exploring the caves formed by huge boulders in John W. MacLeod’s schoolyard, playing on the beach of the Northwest Arm (among other things, watching straight pipes from the millionaires’ homes on the hill disgorge their sewage onto the rocky shore). Now I gather edible mushrooms in the woods behind my home, collect sap from sugar maples for syrup, walk on paths, roads, beaches that offer delightful feasts for the senses. And the people here—family members I’ve played with and loved from a very young age, as well as extended family—neighbours, poets, musicians, artists. Sue Goyette wrote a poem saying music fills our aquifers, “a large rich supply.” That seems exactly right to me, music being both itself and a metaphor for what sings in us all, the light we seek and hope to nurture. My neighbours are people who live close to the land, rural folk, who deal with challenges in the now, whine rarely if ever, grieve deeply and then let sorrow go. Ordinary Nova Scotia folk, not ordinary at all. Community.

What’s the biggest misconception about being a writer? 

The biggest misconception about being a writer is that we’re special, which maybe means smarter (?) than the average bear. I’ve been an actor, a teacher, a writer, and I can tell you I’m still the same person I was in each job, a muddled, struggling, mixed bag with occasional moments where all the efforts mesh and allow something to work, speak, through me. We’re no different from any other humans who care about what they do. Of course the stories and poems and TV shows and plays we create are pretty special because, well, imagine how sad we all would be without them, just as we would be without music or art—or the talents that athletes or plumbers or electronics engineers or waiters or any of the people who don’t write but care about their work, share with us.

What advice do you have for aspiring writers?

To aspiring writers I would say, “Believe.” Believe that you can write, and keep on. If you couldn’t write, you wouldn’t want to. You’d want to do something else just as valuable. Something in you is asking to speak through you, and all you have to do is believe that Something has chosen the right writer. When people are critical, as they can be, think of them as trying to help, not diminish, you. I could have saved myself a lot of wasted time if I’d managed to do that. When a high school teacher wrote on my paper, “Janet, is this your own work?” and that college prof condescended to me with her smiling “an image is not a poem,” I’d be a lot farther along today if I’d taken the one as a compliment and the other as help. My belief wavered. We’re capable of believing anything—why not believe in our voices?

What’s great about writing in your part of Nova Scotia? 

The great thing about writing in my part of Nova Scotia is the community I mentioned in question #3. There is such warmth in the folks of the South Shore. On Saturday, I was invited to be an “Author for Indies” in a lovely new bookstore, LaHave River Books. The store was humming. So many people, including many other writers, who’d come out to be present, to “show up,” to share in the celebration. I’m sure the day was the same for another independent bookstore, Lexicon Books, in Lunenburg. There’s Lunenburg Bound, too, almost next to Lexicon. Imagine! In an era when pundits say books are a thing of the past, we have that many independent bookstores, all within a half hour or less of where I live, all offering frequent author readings, all being supportive and encouraging. They wouldn’t be there if there were no book buyers in the area!

What’s the last great book you read?

The last great book I read was First Snow, Last Light, by Wayne Johnston. I closed the covers on it just day before yesterday. The last great book I read, immediately before that, was Acts and Omissions by Catherine Fox. In other words, I tend to think any book I enjoy fully is great. It’s how I feel about movies, and plays, and TV shows. I think of all the people who contributed to share that book or that show. I think how hard they worked, how hard they must have believed. I throw myself into their world, and don’t come out until it’s over. I always wish I could say “thank you” in person to the writer, the editor, the publisher, the government grant giver. I’m talking about well-written books, where the reader doesn’t have to think about the writing itself (other than to enjoy it), but only what is written. Readers know pretty quickly if the book they’re reading is their kind. I knew a person who said he gave a book 50 pages. In other words, if he wasn’t hooked by page 50, he closed the covers. It’s not a bad system. So much of what we respond to is taste. Who decides what is “great,” after all? The “canon” is almost 100% male. I rest my case.

What’s the last great movie you saw? 

Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool was the last great film I saw. Yes, same story as for books—it was the last film I saw. But truly, it was what even iconoclastic critics might call great. Written by Matt Greenhalgh, after Peter Turner’s memoir; directed by Paul McGuigan; starring Annette Bening, who played Gloria Grahame: every single contributor shone. I was provoked, moved, disturbed, delighted. My aesthetic senses were thrilled. My intelligence was set alight and fanned. What more do we ask of art?

What are you working on right now? 

Zoe Lucas of Sable Island fame and I are writing a sequel to my mother’s novel for young people, Pit Pony. Zoe wants to get Willie, a boy, and Sandy, a horse, to Sable Island. I’m writing the mainland parts, and she’ll do the Sable Island parts, and then we’ll try to make it sound like all one voice. Likely I’ll do the rewrite. My mother (the same Joyce Barkhouse, CM, ONS, as in the answer to the first question) gave us permission years ago, but we’ve just gotten to it. It takes place in the early 1900s in Nova Scotia so I’m having to do a lot of research about daily life then. It’s fun, though a different kind of fun than writing poems.

If you weren’t a writer, what would you be? 

I’ve already had quite a few different roles. Chronologically, I’ve been a camp counselor, sales person, theatre student, parent, academic, professional actor, production assistant, pioneer, library technician, crafts person, shop owner, teacher, amateur theatre director—not to mention all the roles I had in the plays I acted in. That’s what can happen if you’re gifted with a long life, I guess. If I weren’t a writer, I’d be naturalist or a naturopath. I’ve always loved our Earth, identifying edible plants and fungi, naming wildflowers and wild shrubs. Perhaps I could turn that passion into work. Or could if I still had the memory of a young person. Since I don’t, I imagine I’ll continue to write, exploring Earth and its people’s roles and behaviours in poems and prose.

Carol Bruneau is an active member of the WFNS and the author of seven books. Her debut novel, Purple for the Sky (Cormorant Books), won the 2001 Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and the Dartmouth Book Award. Her most recent book, A Bird on Every Tree (Vagrant Press), was a finalist for the 2018 Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. She has a new novel, A Circle on the Surface, coming out this fall. In the following post, she talks about writing, what she loves about living in Nova Scotia, and her new projects.

(Author photo by Bruce Erskine)

How long have you been writing? What drew you to writing in general, and fiction in particular? 

I started writing when I was seven, at the beginning of grade two—as soon as it dawned that you could connect words on paper and have them mean something. I was already hooked on stories long before I learned to read. Growing up in a house with lots of books, when I was small my dad took me every Saturday to Halifax’s old Memorial Library, where we’d stock up. Then he’d read to me. Our favourites were the grimmest Grimm’s fairy tales and the unabridged Pinocchio, never ever the Disney versions, the darker and scarier the better. These were a balance, I guess, to the Babar and Tim and Ginger books I later, begrudgingly, read on my own.

Fiction was and always has been my first love, which is kind of funny because both my parents preferred non-fiction, my dad especially, when he wasn’t reading to me. I inherited his love of history, not quite with his reverence for ‘facts’ but because of its multitudinous stories and all their possibilities. Though my mom was mostly drawn to reading biographies and other ‘true’ stories, coming from a big Cape Breton family she passed on to me, unbeknownst to her, an awe for the way people tell stories to solidify memories and make sense of the world. It was my mom who noticed and encouraged my earliest attempts at writing and first planted the seed that I might become a writer—though for her this meant being a journalist.

There were no fiction writers in our neighbourhood or our milieu, none any of us knew about, anyway. But the area where I grew up—near the Dingle, on the Northwest Arm—was loaded with fictional inspiration. Parts of Thomas Raddall’s novel Hangman’s Beach were set just down the hill from us on Deadman’s island and in Melville Cove. When I read this book in grade ten I thought I’d died and gone to some kind of heaven. But my sense of the magical connections between reading, writing and familiar places came much earlier, in grade five, when my mom and my aunts and my grandmother—all huge L.M. Montgomery fans—started me reading the Anne books. The summer between grade five and six I amused myself daily by scribbling my first attempt at a ‘novel,’ a childish mash-up of an Anne-ish girl character set in the Dingle woods. What can I say? Making stories up has always been part of my life and what I love to do.

What do you think is changing in fiction these days?

I’m pretty sure we all have shorter attention spans these days, accustomed as we are to scrolling, surfing and losing ourselves in social media. It gets harder all the time to immerse ourselves, or let ourselves be immersed, in novels, especially lengthy novels. It’s easy to succumb to readerly ADHD when deep reading requires an equally deep commitment of time and effort. Oddly, despite knowing the rewards of escaping into the world of a great novel, I think our busyness often compels us to put aside pleasurable, leisurely reading for ‘purpose’-driven, work-driven material. To me there’s nothing more satisfying than being inside a big, juicy novel. However, I think in a nod to our busyness, sometimes tight writing (and editing) get sacrificed to repetition and re-hashes in long novels, things normally seen as flaws that must be intended to jog lame memories and help overwhelmed brains keep track of plots. Given the calibre and celebrity of the writers I’m thinking of here, these flaws have to be deliberate. But to me they cause frustration and even a dumbing-down that might be undermining the novel form. The ‘good’ thing is that flabby, sprawling novels make the short story’s brevity increasingly attractive. As long as fiction has readers, this is great news for short story writers. I’m the most un-trendy writer on the planet, but if I were to identify a change? I’d say the short story is the form whose time has come.

What do you love about living in Nova Scotia? 

Everything. It’s where I grew up, it’s where I longed to be when I lived elsewhere, it’s the place I always want to come home to. I love its land- and seascapes in all their variety, so much variety packed into one small province. I love the way the air smells sharply of the sea in April, and I love how, in Nova Scotia, the ‘rule’ of six degrees of separation is a crazy-ass understatement: I love knowing how we are all somehow connected, for better or worse.

I love that I can drive downtown in ten minutes and in even less time be surrounded by woodsy wilderness. I love the beach, I love those blue and white days we get in January. I love how Nova Scotians are or can be tough, resilient and resourceful, and how our values are less inclined to be those of people in more, ahem, mainstream places. (If this sounds smug, it’s not really meant to.) I love how we’re a province with a ridiculously high number of fiercely creative people, writers, artists, musicians.

I love the fact that living most of my years in the same community, where many of the people are ones I’ve known all my life, provides a share in a collective memory pool. The wonder and the comforts of this rootedness make growing old and facing changes quite okay. Above all it’s this continuous sense of community we have here that makes it not just acceptable but fine knowing we’re each just a speck on the globe, among a gazillion other specks, each and every one of us with an identity and a story to tell. Only in Nova Scotia are things so peachy, it’s occasionally tempting to think. But I’m not that much of a bubble-head to imagine we don’t have our ugly aspects too.

What’s the biggest misconception about being a writer?

It’s probably the vague, spacey notion that writers are ‘special’, in the sense that our writing somehow writes itself, that we don’t struggle with our words, or put in crazy long hours, that we’re content living on air. These ideas must stem from the misnomer that we do everything we do for fun, the corollary being that, therefore, it’s okay not to pay us. 

What advice do you have for aspiring writers? 

Stick with it. Have faith in your stories and in your characters. Listen to what your characters have to tell you. Don’t censor yourself. Don’t censor your characters. Just write. The first draft or two or three, you are telling yourself the story. The following drafts are your opportunity to tell the story the way your characters want you to tell it—and the way your reader will want to read it. Don’t get too attached to what you write. Be willing to look at it from various angles. Above all, don’t give up. There’s nothing more defeating than a good story left half-written. Remember that the best writing is rewriting. Write like you have no tomorrow but a present that’s without end.

What’s great about writing in your part of Nova Scotia?

Quick, easy access to excellent libraries and communities of other writers. Grocery stores where complete strangers tell you some of the wildest stuff. 

What’s your guilty pleasure? 

Scarfing down cashews, lots of cashews, as my favourite method of procrastination. The cashews must be salted. Unsalted ones are unacceptable. 

What do you do when you have writer’s block? 

I ride with it. I do other things that are more fun and easier than writing: bake, dig in the garden, go for dog walks. I try to be patient, try not to cave to the nasty restlessness that not-writing inflicts. I try to remind myself that we all need fallow, fodder-gathering times, and times when some of us need to step away from text entirely. Then I look at visual art and let myself be energized or inspired simply by enjoying and marvelling at work I could never hope to do. To sum up: I take a vacation from words. Then, usually, the hunger to be writing returns in pretty quick order.

What are you working on right now? 

Having just finished the final edits on a novel coming out this fall, I’ve begun writing a new novel and am in the midst of a piece of flash fiction for an anthology of writers’ responses to Group of Seven paintings. My little story is based on Arthur Lismer’s ‘Sackville River’, on view now at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.  

If you weren’t a writer, what would you be? 

A geologist. Or maybe a painter.

Andre Fenton is a member of the WFNS, an award-winning spoken word artist and filmmaker, and a novelist. We talked to him about poetry, recent changes in spoken word, living in Nova Scotia, and his first novel, Worthy of Love, which is forthcoming with Formac Publishing. Andre will be sharing his expertise in a workshop, Introduction to Spoken Word, at the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia on June 21.

How long have you been writing? What drew you to writing in general, and poetry and fiction in particular? 

I can’t quite remember what drew me into writing, although a friend had told me that in grade primary I ran around the class room yelling I want to write books when I grow up. I later explored that in high school. I knew then I wanted to be an author, though I wasn’t quite sure how to break into it. In grade 12 during our African Literature class my teacher had rolled in a TV with a DVD player during our poetry unit. I was a bit confused, and didn’t have a clue what was going on, then he played Def Poetry Jam.

There was something exciting and thrilling about it. The way the poet moved the audience. I was always a shy person, and never would have expected myself to be capable of performing, but I found it in myself. I discovered a local poetry show called Word iz Bond, and that had really kicked off my career as a writer. 

What do you think is changing in spoken word these days?   

One thing that is changing in spoken word poetry nowadays is that the younger generation of poets are really establishing themselves. I really love seeing mentorship of youth poets and youth becoming more socially active through their art.

What do you love about living in Nova Scotia? 

What I love most about Nova Scotia is being so close to the ocean. It’s soothing, comforting, and also brings me to a calm place to write. I have traveled all over the country during the past 5 years, but Nova Scotia is the only place I call home. To me, home is where the water is.

What’s the biggest misconception about being a poet? 

The biggest misconception about being a poet is that people will assume poets have a poem on every social issue. Sometimes it’s better for individuals to listen to particular issues than to speak on them. I can only speak on my own experience and what I know. Being involved with the spoken word community has really taught me to listen, and I am so thankful for that.

What advice do you have for aspiring writers? 

My best advice for aspiring writers is to reach out to local authors. We don’t bite! Mentorship to any degree is worthwhile and very beneficial. Showing up to events and being active in the community is also important. We all have a story to tell, but we also have a community to build.

What’s the last great movie you saw?

Black Panther was a film that really pulled my heartstrings in a warm way. There are so many superhero films nowadays, but that one really brought me into a world of warmth and magic.

What are you working on right now?  

I’m currently working on my first novel with Formac Publishing. It’s called Worthy of Love and will be released on October 1st 2018. It follows a young mixed-race man named Adrian Carter, and he is struggling with self-image, weight, and bullying. It felt like a very important story to tell, and I hope it reaches out to young folks who need it. During the process of writing this book, everything felt very genuine and fluid. Often times as a writer, you sometimes have to squeeze your way into the mindset of a certain character. In my case with this book, it felt very honest. I’m very excited for it to hit bookstores. What a dream come true the experience has been thus far!

Josh MacDonald is an award-winning screenwriter and playwright based in Dartmouth.

We talked to him about movies, writing, paper routes, sneaking into the old Hyland theatre, and what to expect in his upcoming workshop, Building the Screenplay Behind the Movie.

How long have you been writing? What drew you to writing in general, and screenwriting in particular?

I’ve been writing my entire life—my entire life where I knew how to write, at least. According to my parents, my earliest completed work was about a duck and a rabbit, in a story entitled… “Duck & Rabbit”. Naturally, the duck and the rabbit fought crime.

Even when I was relatively young, I was drawn to writing as a form of “telepathy”—it struck me as so cool that I could transfer thoughts and ideas from my mind to yours, many days, months, or years after my first imagining had taken place. But my simplest answer, dating all the way back, is that I was drawn to writing because I was drawn to reading. 

Flash-forward a couple of years, and I had a paper route that took me around the Halifax Rotary: one of my deliveries was to the old Hyland movie theatre. As part of my tip every week, the manager of the Hyland let me sneak into any show I wanted to watch, free of charge. For a few seasons, I saw everything from E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial to revival showings of Rear Window. Not only that—I saw these movies multiple times. In an era before VHS machines became commonplace (much less YouTube tutorials!), I feel like it was at the Hyland where I began to understand how movies were put together, and where I began to dream about telling my own stories for film.

Flash-forward a few more years still, and I was trying to follow my dream, somewhat, by getting a Fine Arts degree at Concordia University in Montreal. My parents called to tell me some bad news from back home: the Hyland Theatre had burned to the ground. It struck me as poetic, though—or like something out of a screenplay—that the Hyland had burned down while showing the movie Backdraft.

What’s the biggest misconception about screenwriting?

I don’t know if this is the biggest misconception about screenwriting, but I can tell you it’s a common one, even among my own friends. A couple of Oscars ago, during the “Best Screenplay” categories, the presenters would read from the nominated scripts, while those excerpts were written out across the screen. Excerpts like, “So-and-so steps into her bedroom, drops onto her CREAKING box-spring, then slowly becomes aware of the crumpled NOTE waiting for her in the tangled, unmade sheets.” Scanning these excerpts, my friends were surprised. “Hey,” they said, “we thought you only wrote the dialogue!”

It’s such a weird presumption to make—nobody would ever believe that a novelist just wrote their characters’ dialogue, and their dialogue alone. Maybe auteur theory has convinced everybody that the director is a movie’s principal shaper. Certainly, it is a very collaborative medium… but it is the screenwriter who’s there first, telling the story in full, for everyone else to imagine.

What can participants in your workshop expect to get out of the experience?

We can’t write a feature screenplay during a day-long workshop, but we can certainly develop our fundamental understanding of three-act structure, then build up our screenwriting grammar so that we might better tell those three-act stories on film. It’s those “telepathy skills” I was writing about earlier: we’re going to figure out how you can most powerfully craft your words on paper, so that you can conjure a “mind-movie” in the imagination of a reader (or a film executive!) waiting to receive it on the other side.

The better you can pull off that magic trick, the likelier your movie will actually make it to the big screen (but not the big screen at the Hyland)!

We’re going to watch a lot of movie clips, read a lot of movie excerpts, and set our pens to paper with a few fun writing exercises. It’ll be better than an afternoon at the multiplex, and I can’t wait to collaborate with everybody:

via GIPHY

Josh MacDonald is the screenwriter of the feature films The Corridor and Faith, Fraud & Minimum Wage, distributed by IFC Films and eOne Entertainment, respectively. His stage plays Halo and Whereverville have been produced around North America. His latest work, The Mystery Play, will be published by Talonbooks this fall. 

Sherry D. Ramsey is a member of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia and a prolific author of speculative fiction.

We talked to her about her work, the writing life, what she loves about her part of Nova Scotia (Cape Breton), and what can be expected in her upcoming workshop, Exploring Speculative Fiction.

How long have you been writing? What drew you to writing in general, and writing speculative fiction in particular?

I’ve been writing for a looong time…the first full, complete short story I remember writing was in Grade 7 (and I still have it, handwritten in a Hilroy scribbler!). I think storytelling is an inborn predisposition for me. I began to put serious effort into my writing after abandoning a law career in the early 1990’s, and have been writing more or less full-time since then (the “less full-time” part would relate to raising a family in that time, too). I grew up reading science fiction and fantasy, along with mysteries and other genre fiction, so I guess that’s a long-time predisposition, too. I love the wide-open breadth of imagination and possibility that speculative fiction offers.

What do you think is currently changing in speculative fiction?

Sometimes I hear people talk about how we’re living in the “science fiction future” and so there’s not much left to write about…but I think that’s a bit silly. There’s so much we still don’t know and don’t understand and haven’t explored; still huge scope for the imagination. I think spec fic has certainly changed a lot since the pulp era, in that it’s no longer enough to have a shiny idea—readers want well-rounded plots and relatable characters and everything they demand from other kinds of fiction. But it’s still the “literature of the imagination” and I think will continue to be.
 
What do you love about living in Nova Scotia?

Hmmm, that’s hard to articulate. Being able to see the ocean from my front window. The sense of cultural connection to earth and sea and the natural world. The innate kinship to Scotland that I felt viscerally and unexpectedly when I stepped off a plane in Edinburgh two years ago. Knowing that when the ice comes in, spring is not too far away. Donairs, and oatcakes. Not together, of course.

What do you think is the biggest misconception about writing speculative fiction?

That it’s somehow easier than other kinds of fiction! For instance, some people think fantasy is easy to write because you’re inventing worlds and rules. I think they don’t realize the effort that goes into creating worlds that are internally consistent, or integrated magic systems that don’t simply make everything easy for the characters. Or the research science fiction writers do to create aliens and worlds and technologies that align with known science. There’s also the idea that so-called “escapist” literature doesn’t have anything deep or meaningful to say. It does. It just approaches those things in a different way.
 
What advice do you have for aspiring writers?

Write a lot. Read a lot. Realize that writing is a craft to develop; few people are naturally great writers, but you can become a good one with work. Understand that 99.9% of first drafts are terrible, but that’s okay. Don’t doubt that you have a story to tell. Don’t self-reject because you think your story isn’t good enough.

What’s great about writing in your part of Nova Scotia?

We have a strong writing community in Cape Breton, although it can be a bit fractured at times because we’re spread out geographically. I also like the fact that “Cape Breton writing” is not a homogeneous thing—we’re very diverse in genres and styles and writing interests.

What are you working on now?

I’ve just written the first draft of a middle grade science fiction novel, so I’m anxious to start the editing process on that. It was a ton of fun to write, partly because I’d just done a Writers in the Schools visit before I started working on it. I felt like that “kid-energy” was really fresh in my mind going into the project. I have a fourth novel in my Nearspace series almost done, and the second novel in another series well underway. I’m a project-juggler, so there’s never just one open file on my desktop.
 
If you weren’t a writer, what would you be?

Well…I tried the lawyering thing and that didn’t work out. I’ve been a school library volunteer in my local elementary school for the past fifteen years, and I think that kind of work would be something I’d enjoy. I have fun with the kids and I love swapping book recommendations with them and just generally helping them explore the world of reading.

What can participants in your workshop expect to get out of the experience?

I try to cover a lot of ground in the workshop, from finding ideas to writing strong stories to publishing them, so I hope participants will leave with new information whether they come in with spec-fic writing experience or not. It’s a casual environment and they should expect laughs along the way, so they’ll probably have fun. And we’ll be doing some writing exercises, so if they don’t leave with at least one new story idea, they’re just not trying!

Sherry D. Ramsey is a writer, editor, publisher, creativity addict and self-confessed Internet geek. She writes for all ages, and she loves mysteries and magic as much as she loves spaceships and aliens—so much that she often combines them in interesting ways. Sherry lives in Cape Breton with her husband, children, and dogs, where she consumes far more coffee and chocolate than is likely good for her. You can visit her online at www.sherrydramsey.com; keep up with her much more pithy musings and catch glimpses of her life on Twitter and Instagram @sdramsey.

Between now and our awards ceremony on September 20^th, we will be featuring the shortlisted authors for the 2014 East Coast Literary Awards.

This week, we feature John DeMont, author of A Good Day’s Work: In Pursuit of a Disappearing Canada. His book is shortlisted for the Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award.

BIOGRAPHY
John DeMont is the best-selling and award-winning author of Citizens Irving: The Irvings of New Brunswick and The Last Best Place: Lost in the Heart of Nova Scotia. He has written for many publications, including the Financial Times, Canadian Geographic, The Walrus, and Maclean’s, where he was Atlantic bureau chief for ten years.

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Describe your ideal writing space. 
Good chair, decent view with nice scenery. Instrumental music—for some reason baroque composers, particularly Bach works best—because lyrics distract. No people around, but a working espresso machine because my creative process, such as it is, is fuelled by cappuccino.  Some space nearby so that if I feel the need I can do my karate katas, stretch or just move around.

Tell us a bit about your process. Do you work in snippets or do you have a full draft? Are you a planner or do you feel your way through? Pencil, pen, typewriter, computer? 
I write on a lap top in scenes and sections that I tend to move around. I write multiple drafts. When I’m working on a book I “warm-up” by editing what I wrote the last time I sat down which may or may not have been yesterday. 
I work from the vaguest of outlines: a chapter for e.g. and the components that might go in it. Like a lot of writers I try to stop when I know where I’m going next so I don’t sit there staring at the cursor the next time my bum is in the chair. That usually works out to 900-1,200 words a day. 
My most productive times are first part of the morning and later in the afternoon. I could take noon until 3 p.m. off, so unproductive is that period, and sometimes do. Although when I’m really stuck on a bit of writing working out, meditating or even walking the dog can distract me and let my mind work subliminally to solve the problem. 

Give us the ‘elevator pitch’ of your book. 
The iconic Canada—of small towns and close knit communities—is disappearing. I tell that story through 10 old-style jobs that are on the cusp of going forever.

What was the biggest difference between your first draft and last? 
The first draft is unhewn lumber with no real voice. By the end I’ve moved entire scenes around. Hopefully the structure works and it sounds like me.

Do you feel public readings help writers develop their craft? Or are readings simply part of the business of being a writer? 
Reading out loud certainly helps make writing better. Public readings help build some momentum for a book. And they’re sort of the writer’s public responsibility to the world of readers.

Many writers have other roles, such as instructors, mentors, editors, cultural workers, publishers. What other roles, if any, keep you busy and do you view them as supportive of your work as a writer?
I’m a senior writer and columnist for Halifax’s Chronicle Herald newspaper which keeps me hopping every day.  It keeps me fresh and engaged and provides grist for my book writing mill. It also allows me to try lots of different things on the writing side.
Sometimes I talk to groups about writing non-fiction. (Teaching might be too strong a word.) That forces me to think about what I do and how I do it. That’s a helpful process for a writer.

Your thoughts on Twitter (in 140 characters or less.)
Great way to get the word out. On the other hand for me it can be a great time sucker upper. So overall it may be a wash.

What are you currently working on? 
A personal history of Nova Scotia.

What book out there do you wish you had written?
Great Plains, by Ian Frazier. Or John McPhee’s trilogy on geology, Annals of the Former World.

Who is your biggest cheerleader? 
My wife Lisa Napier. 

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The winner of the Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award will be announced in Halifax on September 20, 2014. 
John DeMont’s book, A Good Day’s Work, can be purchased from your local independent bookseller. 

Between now and our awards ceremony on September 20^th, we will be featuring the shortlisted authors for the 2014 East Coast Literary Awards.

This week, we feature Mary Dalton, author of Hooking. Her book is shortlisted for the JM Abraham Poetry Award.

BIOGRAPHY

Mary Dalton has published four volumes of poetry, the most recent of which are Merrybegot [2003] and Red Ledger [2006]. Her work has also been widely anthologized in Canada and abroad. Dalton has won numerous awards, including the EJ Pratt award and the Newfoundland and Labrador Book Award, and has been shortlisted for the Winterset, Pat Lowther, and Atlantic Poetry awards. She lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland. 

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Describe your ideal writing space.
A large white room, with a gleaming wooden floor; a desk at a large bay window looking over water, a high-backed wooden chair, a cat or two lolling on a rug nearby. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases. Maybe a vase of honeysuckle or mock orange, Oliver Shroer’s violin drifting in occasionally. This room is nothing like any of the rooms I write in. But you did say “ideal.”  Perhaps, however, no writing would happen in such a room….

Tell us a bit about your process.  Do you work in snippets or do you have a full draft? Are you a planner or do you feel your way through? Pencil, pen, typewriter, computer?
I once compared writing centos to a Newfoundland outport activity engaged in by boys of a certain age: copying, i.e. leaping from ice pan to ice pan. I think all my writing of poems is like that, an intuitive, an aleatory process.  Materials? Pen and paper, then various drafts on a computer, some of these separated by months or years.

Give us the ‘elevator pitch’ of your book.
I don’t know what this phrase means. Something to do with buttonholing someone in an elevator? Not my style…

What was the biggest difference between your first draft and last?
Not sure I can answer this question…I am tempted to interpret draft here as draft beer, in which case maybe the difference has to do with the angle of tilt.

Do you feel public readings help writers develop their craft? Or are readings simply part of the business of being a writer?
It seems to me that that would vary from writer to writer. I myself always like to hear poets read their work, as I gain some sense of how they hear the rhythms of their work. And some poets are brilliant performers of their work—I think of Paul Durcan and Christian Bok, for instance. In my own readings I try to give voice to the underlying music of the pieces and enjoy doing so.

Many writers have other roles, such as instructors, mentors, editors, cultural workers, publishers. What other roles, if any, keep you busy and do you view them as supportive of your work as a writer?
I teach creative writing courses in poetry at university, among other courses on poetry. The teaching keeps me engaged in conversations  about the genre and it keeps me reading widely.

Your thoughts on Twitter (in 140 characters or less.) 
Something I am not inclined to spend my time engaged in.

What are you currently working on?
A collection of poems tentatively titled The Sideways Nod. I can’t say much more, as I find that talking about a project at certain stages can inhibit the process of creation.

What book out there do you wish you had written?
Dart, by Alice Oswald. It is a long poem, a dazzling many-faceted book, in many voices, about the River Dart.  It is a major work of our time.

Who is your biggest cheerleader?
Can’t say—was nonetheless glad to hear the doctor who saw me recently in the crowded emergency department of a hospital say, ” You’re a poet! I love your poetry!” (I note wryly that maybe I thought that such enthusiasm for my poetry could translate into a more deeply considered diagnosis in a frenetically busy set-up.)  Perhaps I can’t  answer this question  because I dislike intensely the concept of cheerleading, which suggests a kind of mindless enthusiasm. 

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The winner of the JM Abraham Poetry Award will be announced in Halifax on September 20, 2014. 
Mary Dalton’s book, Hooking, can be purchased from your local independent bookseller. 

Between now and our awards ceremony on September 20^th, we will be featuring the shortlisted authors for the 2014 East Coast Literary Awards.

This week, we feature Richard Foot, author of the book, Driven: How the Bathburst Tragedy Ignited a Crusade for Change. His book is shortlisted for the Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award.

BIOGRAPHY
Richard Foot is a freelance writer for the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, CBC Radio, MacLean’s, and the Postmedia newspapers. He was formerly the Atlantic correspondent for the National Post and the Moncton bureau chief for the Telegraph Journal. His journalism has been nominated for three National Newspaper Awards, a National Magazine Award, and an Atlantic Journalism Award. He lives in Halifax.

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Describe your ideal writing space.
A cottage on a quiet beach on the north shore of PEI, with a long expanse of sand on which to walk and think and let the words percolate.

Tell us a bit about your process.  Do you work in snippets or do you have a full draft? Are you a planner or do you feel your way through? Pencil, pen, typewriter, computer?
I’ve only ever used a computer. I need fairly large chunks of time alone — at least 4 or 5 hour writing periods — in order to accomplish anything. I have a pretty good idea of how the book will be laid out and how the narrative will be told before I begin.

Give us the ‘elevator pitch’ of your book.
Driven revolves around the 2008 Bathurst High tragedy. But it’s really the story of two unlikely agents of change — a pair of quiet, ordinary, small town mothers, transformed by the loss of their teenage sons, into a team of take-no-prisoners political activists. 

What was the biggest difference between your first draft and last?
I wrote the book as events were still unfolding, so the ending of the first draft was incomplete. Fortunately, political developments came to a head, as did developments in the lives of the protagonists, so a more natural and satisfying ending presented itself by the time I was writing the final draft.

Do you feel public readings help writers develop their craft? Or are readings simply part of the business of being a writer?
I would say the “craft” of writing either comes from within, or is learned and honed through the concentrated process of writing stories. It’s deeply personal. Public readings, on the other hand, aren’t personal at all, they’re part of the business of marketing books and reaching audiences.

Many writers have other roles, such as instructors, mentors, editors, cultural workers, publishers. What other roles, if any, keep you busy and do you view them as supportive of your work as a writer?
I’m a journalist and editor, so I write and read other people’s writing every day to make a living. Being a journalist certainly taught me how to write clearly and tell good stories. Anyone who goes through the fire of daily journalism will also know how to focus the mind, meet deadlines and write under pressure. 

Your thoughts on Twitter (in 140 characters or less.)
Twitter is past its prime. What’s the next big thing?

What are you currently working on?
A book about politics, and the Canadians trying to save our broken democracy.

What book out there do you wish you had written?
Any of the Harry Potter books. They sold quite a few copies.

Who is your biggest cheerleader?
My two children. They have this mysterious belief that I can accomplish anything.

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The winner of the Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award will be announced in Halifax on September 20, 2014. 

Richard Foot’s book, Driven: How the Bathurst Tragedy Ignited a Crusade for Change, can be purchased from your local independent bookseller.  

Between now and our awards ceremony on September 20^th, we will be featuring the shortlisted authors for the 2014 East Coast Literary Awards.

This week, we feature Ed Kavanagh, author of the short story collection, Strays. His collection is shortlisted for the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award.

BIOGRAPHY

Ed Kavanagh grew up in Kilbride, Newfoundland and Labrador, and now lives in Mount Pearl. He received an Honours B.A. in English and a B. Ed from Memorial University of Newfoundland, a B.A. in Music from Carleton University, and an M.A. in English and Creative Writing from the University of New Brunswick. He has worked as a writer, actor, musician, theatre director, university lecturer, and editor. His stories, essays, dramatic scripts, and poetry have earned many awards in the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters Competition. Ed has taught creative writing through the extension services of both Memorial University and the University of New Brunswick. He is a past-president of the Writer’s Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador.

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Describe your ideal writing space.
Anywhere I can comfortably curl up. Chairs, couches—even propped up in bed if I can’t sleep. My music room is also good: I like being surrounded by my instruments. Certainly not a desk. I write with a pencil (usually a Blackwing 602) on pads of yellow paper, so I’m pretty mobile. But I do need quiet, although I’ll sometimes temper that with very soft classical music.

Tell us a bit about your process.  Do you work in snippets or do you have a full draft? Are you a planner or do you feel your way through? Pencil, pen, typewriter, computer?
Well, we all need what I call a “point of departure,” but for me that doesn’t need to be much: an image, a snippet of conversation etc. Anything intriguing. I can usually tell pretty quickly if it’s something I want to explore. And I don’t worry if the final destination of the story isn’t immediately clear. You don’t write stories as much as you discover them. So my stories are always a revelation, arrived at by embarking on the process. I’m always surprised by my completed stories—especially the endings.
I have one particular quirk: at the top of my pad of paper (sometimes an exercise book) I always write two things: Have faith and Don’t break the dream. Have faith that you’ll eventually discover the story. The second idea comes from the creative writing teacher John Gardner. He stressed that writers create a “fictional dream” for readers. It’s the writer’s job to not break that dream—i.e., pull readers to the surface instead of keeping them submerged in the story. That’s a sobering thought because there are, of course, many pitfalls that can break the dream—poor dialogue, clichés, weak characterization. So trying not to break the dream certainly keeps me on my toes. And, of course, we all need a little faith.
As I said above, I write with pencil and paper until about the third draft. At that point I’ll put the piece on the computer. Putting it on before that makes the work look prematurely finished—to me, at least. And as Holden Caulfield said about why he liked horses better than cars: a pencil is at least human.

Give us the ‘elevator pitch’ of your book.
That’s a tough one when you’re talking about a collection of ten short stories. I’d like to think they’re all different, so I’d have to give you ten different pitches. But generally I’m exploring people who are a little on the outside, a little astray. That might involve a ten-year-old boy or a ninety-year-old woman. I think everyone feels astray at some time or another. But I don’t want to sound too negative: there’s lots of humour in the book!

What was the biggest difference between your first draft and last?
You wouldn’t say they had anything to do with each other. As is often said, the secret to writing is rewriting. And what you see out the window at the beginning of a journey is certainly not what you see at the end. I tinkered with some of the stories in Strays, off and on, for over five years. The longest story in the book, “The Strayaway Child,” is nearly 19,000 words. I don’t know how many words I actually wrote to arrive at those 19,000 but I have stacks and stacks of draft pages. I looked at the first draft page a little while ago and I hardly recognized my protagonist! But why should I have recognized her? She was, after all, just beginning her journey. And journeys always change people.

Do you feel public readings help writers develop their craft? Or are readings simply part of the business of being a writer?
I’ve done some writing for children, and for that audience the readings definitely help. Children are usually a little more honest and forthcoming with their reactions, so you can easily pick up on what they find charming or funny. Adults, however, can be more inscrutable. You might give the exact same reading to two adult audiences on successive nights and get two very different responses. Children, though, are more consistent—whether they like something or not. But public readings do help me get a sense of the rhythm of my work, and that’s useful. My biggest problem in reading from Strays is what to choose. There are ten stories, ten worlds . . . it’s like trying to pick a favourite child. I’m always second-guessing myself.

Many writers have other roles, such as instructors, mentors, editors, cultural workers, publishers. What other roles, if any, keep you busy and do you view them as supportive of your work as a writer?
I teach first-year English at Memorial and that obviously involves looking deeply into some fine stories, plays, and poems. Seeing how great writers have gone about their work can definitely help you with your craft. It certainly makes you aware of the options. I also work as an editor and that helps my work on a technical level. I’m also a musician and my concern with sound and rhythm in writing is probably attributable to that. I read all of my work aloud many times during composition. So musical ideas are never far from my mind.

Your thoughts on Twitter (in 140 characters or less.)
I don’t use it.

What are you currently working on?
Nothing. I’d like to begin a novel but I’m still recovering from Strays. As any writer will say, the final drafts of a book—making those last-minute decisions!—editorial meetings etc. can be exhausting. They certainly are for me. So at the moment I’m just enjoying the short NL summer. Having said that, do writers ever really stop working?

What book out there do you wish you had written?
My next one! 

Who is your biggest cheerleader?
I have a number of close friends who make a special effort to promote my work. In particular, my sister is always helpful. The writing community in NL is also close-knit and supportive. The Writers’ Alliance of NL is another great booster. And I tend to get a lot of emails from my readers. That, of course, is the best.

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The winner of the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award will be announced in Halifax on September 20, 2014. 

Ed Kavanagh’s collection of short stories, Strays, can be purchased from your local independent bookseller.  

Between now and our awards ceremony on September 20^th, we will be featuring the shortlisted authors for the 2014 East Coast Literary Awards.

This week, we feature Stephen Kimber, author of What Lies Across the Water: The Real Story of the Cuban Five. His book is shortlisted for the Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award.

BIOGRAPHY
Stephen Kimber is a professor of Journalism at the University of King’s College in Halifax and an award-winning writer, editor and broadcaster. He is the author of one novel and seven non-fiction books.

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Describe your ideal writing space.
We put an addition on our house this past year that includes a basement walk-out office. There’s a built in horseshoe-shaped desk/air-traffic-control console with windows overlooking my wife’s garden. Having spent much of my writing life in basement offices without a view, I’m slightly nervous I’ll be too distracted by my new window on the world to actually write. But not really… I acually have several offices: the new one at home, another at our cottage overlooking a lake in Lunenburg County and a new one — probably in a basement too!— I’ll be moving into at the university. But I also write on planes, in airports, in hotel rooms and, perhaps too often, in my head when I’m driving on the highway. 

Tell us a bit about your process.  Do you work in snippets or do you have a full draft? Are you a planner or do you feel your way through? Pencil, pen, typewriter, computer?
I’ve become a planner. I develop an outline of the book I want to write — one that almost always changes and evolves as I write it — and then I write, revise, edit and polish chapter by chapter as I go. Each morning, I sit at my computer (I’ve been writing on a computer for so long I can barely write with pen and paper any more), begin at the beginning of whatever section or chapter I’m writing and revise up to where I ended the day before, then add new material. That not only helps me to get into the “swing” of my story and writing each day, but it means that the beginning of a chapter will have been reviewed and revised a dozen or more times before I move on to the next one. The result is that when I come to the end of the first draft of the book, I’ve usually already completed my-next-to-final draft. I try to set aside the manuscript for at least a few days before returning for a final beginning-to-end polish, which I turn in to the authorities.

Give us the ‘elevator pitch’ of your book.
What Lies Across the Water: The Real Story of the Cuban Five is a narrative nonfiction thriller about terrorists who blow up airplanes and try to overthrow governments, and intelligence agents who try to stop them. The twist is that these terrorists are not Muslim. They’re Cuban exiles. And the men trying to stop them? Cuban intelligence agents. The Cuban Five were members of an intelligence network dispatched to Florida in the early 1990s to infiltrate militant anti-Castro exile groups hatching terrorist attacks against their country. In 1998, after the Cubans passed on to the U.S. government information their agents had uncovered about a plot to blow up an airplane filled with beach-bound tourists heading for Cuba, the FBI arrested … not the terrorists plotting the attack but the agents trying to stop it!

What was the biggest difference between your first draft and last?
Despite what I said earlier about planning and outlining, I initially wrote a significant chunk of the Cuban Five manuscript focusing on a string of hotel bombings that took place in Havana in 1997. I thought when I wrote it that this would become the opening chapters of the book. Later, I decided to begin the book seven years earlier with the arrival of the first Cuban intelligence agent in Miami and then unfold the story chronologically. Luckily, the chapters I’d written fit neatly into the middle of that chronology.

Do you feel public readings help writers develop their craft? Or are readings simply part of the business of being a writer?
A bit of both, I’d say. Public readings are definitely part of the writing business these days, but they’re also a chance to test out passages you think worked well on the page, and see how readers respond to them. I’ll often find myself wanting to edit already published passages to make them read better. Sometimes I do! With the Cuban Five book, readings have been doubly important because they provide a chance to introduce readers to a story most haven’t heard before.

Many writers have other roles, such as instructors, mentors, editors, cultural workers, publishers. What other roles, if any, keep you busy and do you view them as supportive of your work as a writer?
I’m incredibly lucky. I teach journalism and creative nonfiction in my day job, which means I get to think about what it is I do as a writer, as well as to write myself. And writing — practicing my craft — is considered part of my job too. Which is both exciting and humbling.

Your thoughts on Twitter (in 140 characters or less.)
Twitter? I tweet. I use Twitter to spread the word about what I write. For a book writer, 140 characters is daunting, but great discipline.

What are you currently working on?
I’m working on a film treatment for What Lies while trying to decide what book project I want to tackle next, and whether it will be fiction or nonfiction. Unusually for me, I’m having trouble settling on a next subject… which probably means I’m not ready yet.

What book out there do you wish you had written?
Too many to count or catalogue. I try not to think about that. Sometimes, I’ll wander through a bookstore, look at all the wonderful, eclectic, brilliant, awe-inspiring titles on the shelves and ask myself, does the world really need my next book? At the end of the day, of course, the answer doesn’t really matter. Like most writers, I write for me and not for the world, and because I can’t imagine myself not writing.

Who is your biggest cheerleader? 
Until she died a few years ago, I would have said my mother. She unconditionally supported me and my writing, even when she didn’t agree with it, which was a fair amount of the time. These days, it’s my sister — I’ve seriously thought of asking her to be my publicist! — and my wife who can, thankfully, be supportive and gently critical at the same time.

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The winner of the Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award will be announced in Halifax on September 20, 2014. 

Stephen Kimber’s book, What Lies Across the Water: The Real Story of the Cuban Five, can be purchased from your local independent bookseller.