Workshops & Events

Sparking Bookish Joy when Writing for Children (Halifax) with Lana Shupe

Discover how to infuse your stories with imagination and joyful curiosity! In this engaging workshop, award-winning author Lana Shupe explores the essential ingredients of memorable children’s books by creating wonder through voice, humour, and heart—especially heart!

Participants will discover techniques for inspiring young readers, weaving meaningful themes into age-appropriate stories and turning everyday moments into magical adventures. Whether you are just beginning your writing journey or polishing a manuscript, this workshop will provide practical tips and fresh inspiration to help you craft stories that children will treasure long after the final page is turned.

Come ready to spark your creativity and ignite bookish joy in yourself and in the hearts of your future readers.

About the instructor: Award-winning author Lana Shupe has loved books for as long as she can remember. A former teacher, bookseller and lifelong storyteller, she delights in creating stories that celebrate kindness, imagination, history and the magic to be found in everyday life. Her acclaimed picture books include The Lonely Little Lighthouse, The Hippie Pirates, The Little Church Beside the Sea, and The Book Witch, the Wee White Dog and The Little Free Library. Her first book for adults, Seasons of the Heart: A Tapestry of Stories Woven through Time, will be published in September, 2026. Lana loves to share the lessons she has learned on her author journey through workshops and writing group meet-ups. When she is not writing, Lana can be found with a good book in hand, exploring the outdoors while crafting stories in her head, or spending time with her beloved family.

Recommended experience level: All writers welcome (About recommended experience levels)

Participant cap: 30

Location: Room 301 (3rd floor), Halifax Public Library (5440 Spring Garden Rd, Halifax)
Wheelchair-accessible venue with all-gender and gendered washrooms

Date & time: Saturday, Oct 3, 2026 (1:00pm to 1:45pm Atlantic)

Participation is free

Add $0 pre-registration to cart

Pre-registration (up to 20 seats) is now open to WFNS members and non-members alike. Drop-in registration (at least 10 seats) will be open to all on a first-come-first-served basis.

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Michelle Hébert reads from A Good Girl’s Guide to Lying (Halifax)

Booktoberfest, Public Reading, Workshops & Events

Join us at Booktoberfest 2026 for a reading and Q&A with author Michelle Hébert, who will read from her memoir A Good Girl’s Guide to Lying: Losing My Memory, Searching for Truth, & Confronting Complex Trauma (Nimbus Publishing):

On paper, Michelle Hébert was a successful, high-functioning woman. A former social worker turned government executive, a mother of two, a wife, a published author. But there was a secret about her that nobody knew—one that her own brain was trying to keep from her. One that was destroying her from the inside out. Why couldn’t she recognize herself in mirrors? Why did her mind disconnect from her body for long periods, leaving her to deal with decisions she made while she was dissociated—like finding herself walking down the aisle at a wedding she didn’t remember planning? Why couldn’t she shake the gnawing fear that something was very wrong with her brain, or that she’d done something terrible?

A mystery disguised as a memoir, this deeply layered story of complex trauma takes readers on one woman’s search for decades of memories lost. Gaslighted by misogyny and a broken health-care system, and forced to reinvent herself over and over again, Michelle must piece together the fragments of her past to uncover what happened one August afternoon in the 1980s.

A sometimes heartbreaking, often darkly humorous, and ultimately redemptive memoir of identity, resilience, and resistance, and a compelling testament to the lengths our brains will go to protect us, A Good Girl’s Guide to Lying is a powerful reminder that it’s never too late to become who you really are.

Michelle will sell and sign copies before and after this reading as part of Booktoberfest’s book market.

Michelle Hébert writes about poignant topics with dark humour. Her debut novel, Every Little Thing She Does is Magic, was a Toronto Star 2024 ‘Must Read’ and a 49thShelf.com ‘Book of the Year’. Her new book, A Good Girl’s Guide to Lying, is a mystery disguised as a memoir. With a structure mimicking her fractured memories, it encourages readers to question whose truth society values.

Michelle has degrees in social work and creative writing and coaches writers using trauma-informed practices. She lives in Halifax with four cats and a dog who thinks she’s a cat.

Location: BMO Community Room (2nd floor), Halifax Central Library (5440 Spring Garden Rd, Halifax)
This is a wheelchair-accessible venue with all-gender and gendered washrooms.

Date: Saturday, Oct 3, 2026 (1:00pm to 1:30pm)

All are welcome!

Michelle Hébert reads from A Good Girl’s Guide to Lying (Halifax) Read More »

Women with Agency: a fiction workshop (Halifax) with Cheryl Lawson

Booktoberfest, Workshops & Events

This workshop is designed to help fiction writers build their awareness of character agency. We’ll consider agency in lived experience and in the contexts of fiction and psychology, gaining useful insights on developing agency partnership between men and women characters and approaching vulnerability, permission, and violence. Discussion will draw on popular fiction examples (such as The Hating Game, It Ends With Us, and The Twilight Saga) to illustrate the presence or lack of agency. If time allows, participants will create their own micro-fiction snippets that demonstrate their understanding of agency.

While focusing on women characters, the workshop will address elements of agency that also apply to non-binary, trans, and other gender-marginalized characters.

About the instructor: Cheryl Lawson is an author and artist living in Nova Scotia. Cheryl came from South Africa almost twenty years ago, first living in British Columbia before settling in Nova Scotia recently. For over ten years, Cheryl has actively pursued her passion for writing. Her self-published work includes science fiction and poetry-photography books.

Recommended experience level: All writers welcome (About recommended experience levels)

Participant cap: 30

Location: Room 301 (3rd floor), Halifax Public Library (5440 Spring Garden Rd, Halifax)
Wheelchair-accessible venue with all-gender and gendered washrooms

Date & time: Saturday, Oct 3, 2026 (12:00pm to 12:45pm Atlantic)

Participation is free

Add $0 pre-registration to cart

Pre-registration (up to 20 seats) is now open to WFNS members and non-members alike. Drop-in registration (at least 10 seats) will be open to all on a first-come-first-served basis.

Women with Agency: a fiction workshop (Halifax) with Cheryl Lawson Read More »

Veronica Post & Emma FitzGerald read from Let the Good Times Roll & The Man in Motion (Halifax)

Booktoberfest, Public Reading, Workshops & Events

Join us at Booktoberfest 2026 for a reading and discussion of disability representation with graphic novelist Veronica Post and illustrator Emma FitzGerald.

Veronica Post will read from her autobiographical graphic short story Let the Good Times Roll (Conundrum Press):

Join the Post family for a vacation à la wheelchair! See how disabled travellers and their loved ones come up with creative solutions while navigating barriers abroad. Designed to expose the reality of travel in a wheelchair to able-bodied readers, this book fosters greater understanding and change toward a more inclusive world.

Emma FitzGerald will present her picture book The Man In Motion: How Rick Hansen’s World Tour Helped Break Down Barriers for People with Disabilities (written by Lorna Schultz Nicholson and Rick Hansen; OwlKids):

The inspiring story of Canadian hero Rick Hansen, who wheeled around the world to raise money and awareness for people with disabilities. In 1973, at the age of 15, Rick Hansen was in a life-changing car accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down. Twelve years later, motivated by the challenges he faced, Rick embarked on the two-year-long Man In Motion World Tour, wheeling 40,075 kilometers through 34 countries on four continents. Despite the many obstacles Rick encountered during the Tour, he never gave up on his dream: to raise awareness about the enormous potential of people with disabilities. His tour raised $26 million to help with the creation of an accessible and inclusive world. Written by Lorna Schultz Nickerson in consultation with Rick Hansen and dynamically illustrated by Emma FitzGerald, this biographical picture book invites readers to join Rick through the ups and downs of the Man In Motion World Tour and shows the power of perseverance and dedication.

Veronica and Emma will sell and sign copies before and after this reading as part of Booktoberfest’s book market.

Veronica Post is a Doug Wright Award-winning author and illustrator of graphic novels, comics, and children’s books. President of the Comic Creators Society of Nova Scotia, and founding member of the Foghorn Collective, she loves to weave philosophy, humour, and social commentary into stories of a not-so-ordinary life. Her latest book, Let the Good Times Roll, is an autobiographical graphic short story published by Conundrum press exploring how barriers to accessibility affect a family traveling abroad.

Emma FitzGerald was born to Irish parents in Southern Africa. She has been writing and illustrating books since Hand Drawn Halifax was published with Formac Publishing in 2015. Her latest picture book project has her exploring small islands off of Nova Scotia’s mainland, researching lighthouses and puffin migration routes. It will be released with Nimbus Publishing in 2027, with words by Sue MacLeod, Halifax’s first poet laureate in 2001.

Location: BMO Community Room (2nd floor), Halifax Central Library (5440 Spring Garden Rd, Halifax)
This is a wheelchair-accessible venue with all-gender and gendered washrooms.

Date: Saturday, Oct 3, 2026 (12:00pm to 12:30pm)

All are welcome!

Veronica Post & Emma FitzGerald read from Let the Good Times Roll & The Man in Motion (Halifax) Read More »

Carol Bruneau reads from The Little Way (Halifax)

Booktoberfest, Public Reading, Workshops & Events

Join us at Booktoberfest 2026 for a reading and Q&A with author Carol Bruneau, who will read from her latest novel, The Little Way (Nimbus Publishing):

Basically, the world has two types of people…those who garden and those who don’t.

Isla Fownes knows flowers. After running her shop, Flower Power!, in the Halifax suburb of Fairfield for nearly fifteen years, she can make a casket spray in her sleep. (She also knows that no one complains if funeral roses don’t bloom.)

A dedicated mother and daughter on the cusp of fifty, Isla spends every spare minute caring for her aging father, Arthur, a passionate conservationist, and her aimless daughter, Rache, an out-of-work would-be artist who’s just shared the surprising news of her pregnancy (and just who is the father?). That is, until a handsome widower’s sailboat unceremoniously sinks in the waters off her Northwest Arm home, and Isla is saved from a Brönte-like spinsterdom. If only Lester would stop talking about how much her home might be worth.

In a city eroding both physically and spiritually, “hopelessly” romantic Isla struggles to keep her flower shop afloat despite the threat of conglomerates, vandals, and petty criminals; protect her coveted property from vulture capitalists, infilling, and soulless “starter castles”; and shore up her heart as she asks herself, once and for all, what kind of love she deserves.

From one of Canada’s most beloved storytellers and “a master” (Quill & Quire) of her craft, Carol Bruneau’s The Little Way is a profound and authentic portrayal of one woman’s mission to redefine herself on her own terms.

Carol will sell and sign copies before and after this reading as part of Booktoberfest’s book market.

Based in Nova Scotia/Mi’kma’ki, Carol Bruneau is the author of twelve books—four short fiction collections, one nonfiction book, and seven novels including The Little Way, a new release this fall by Nimbus Publishing/Vagrant Press. Her 2020 novel, Brighten the Corner Where You Are, was nominated for the International Dublin Literary Award, and her most recent short story collection, Threshold, was shortlisted for last year’s Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. Her 2018 novel, A Circle on the Surface, won the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction, and her first novel, Purple for Sky, won both the Dartmouth Book Award and the Raddall Award in 2021.

She lives in Halifax with her husband and a teeny-tiny mini-panther named Moody. She’s at work (slowly) on her eighth novel.

Location: BMO Community Room (2nd floor), Halifax Central Library (5440 Spring Garden Rd, Halifax)
This is a wheelchair-accessible venue with all-gender and gendered washrooms.

Date: Saturday, Oct 3, 2026 (11:30am to 12:00pm)

All are welcome!

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Mythic Monsters: a poetry workshop (Halifax) with Tegan Zimmerman

Booktoberfest, Workshops & Events

This poetry workshop will concentrate on the creative expression of mythic creatures. First focusing on how to select a mythic monster or creature, we’ll then use a series of prompts and questions to develop our ideas into a more fully realized creative concepts. We’ll create word-clouds and highlight ideas, phrases, and lines that can be shaped into draft poems, and we’ll discuss why and how returning to myth can offer multiple possibilities for creative and critical expression.

About the instructor: Tegan Zimmerman (PhD) holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia and is the author of the poetry book Chimeras (Inanna Publications, 2026). She is Chair of the Alexa McDonough Institute at Mount Saint Vincent University (2024 – 2026) and the Editor of Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture, and Social Justice. She specializes in contemporary gender theory and women’s writing that centralizes the maternal and mother-daughter relations. She has two beloved Pugs named Kosmo and Canto.

Recommended experience level: All writers welcome (About recommended experience levels)

Participant cap: 30

Location: Room 301 (3rd floor), Halifax Public Library (5440 Spring Garden Rd, Halifax)
Wheelchair-accessible venue with all-gender and gendered washrooms

Date & time: Saturday, Oct 3, 2026 (11:00am to 11:45am Atlantic)

Participation is free

Add $0 pre-registration to cart

Pre-registration (up to 20 seats) is now open to WFNS members and non-members alike. Drop-in registration (at least 10 seats) will be open to all on a first-come-first-served basis.

Mythic Monsters: a poetry workshop (Halifax) with Tegan Zimmerman Read More »