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Book launch: In Search of Puffins

Date:
Time:
-
Venue:
Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia
Location:
1113 Marginal Rd, Halifax. More info
Link:
https://nimbus.ca/store/in-search-of-puffins-stories-of-loss-light-and-flight.html
Calendar:
Member event

Join Marjorie Simmins for the launch of In Search of Puffins: Stories of Loss, Light and Flight (Pottersfield Press, 2025). The event includes a reading and book signings with cash sales.

In Search of Puffins: Stories of Loss, Light and Flight is the third memoir in a series that began with Coastal Lives and Year of the Horse. In it, author Marjorie Simmins honours her late husband, Silver Donald Cameron, and all those who recreate themselves after loss. It’s also a profoundly optimistic book, believing in the healing powers of friendship, laughter, and time.

Marjorie Simmins is an award-winning author, journalist, and teacher. She has written five nonfiction books and has written for newspapers and magazines across Canada and in the United States. Now based in Truro, Nova Scotia, Simmins offers writing workshops in person, around the Maritimes and across Canada, as well conducting as Zoom workshops, from Coast to Coast (always hoping to find Northern writers).

The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia office is a wheelchair-accessible venue with a wheelchair-accessible, non-gendered washroom. For assistance finding the WFNS office door, see our map of the area.

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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