Community event

The Atlantic Book Awards Society seeks nominations for the 2025 Atlantic Legacy Award. This award honours individuals who have made a lasting contribution to the development of the literary arts in Atlantic Canada, people who have gone above and beyond the call of duty and who have, through innovation, risk-taking, self-sacrifice, and/or creativity, provided opportunity or inspiration (or both) for those sharing Atlantic Canadian stories through writing and publishing.

Shean Poets & Writers invite you to an afternoon of poetry. Put a poem in your pocket and bring it along. Be it haiku or lyric, free verse or rhyme, traditional or modern, funny or sad, seasoned or shy, we’d love to have you join us. Register when you get there. Questions: tpmvfh@gmail.com

Share your writing with us or just come listen. Poetry, fiction, nonfiction all are welcome!

What can you expect?
Doors open around 6:45 for this PWYC event. Slot signup on-site. This is a great place to practice public reading and test out new work in a friendly group of like-minded creatives. We always have a good time, lots of applause and laughs.

The bar is open, and there’s limited (order-in) food service.

The venue is mostly on one level but there are three stairs to get to the washroom. The front door isn’t automatic, please knock if you need assistance!

Join us as the shortlisted titles for the Atlantic Book Awards and the Nova Scotia Book Awards are revealed. Raise a toast to the nominated authors and find out about upcoming events of the Atlantic Book Awards Festival, May 29 to June 5.

Atlantic Book Awards include the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, the J.M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry Award, the Ann Connor Brimer Award for Atlantic Canadian Literature (YA), the Atlantic Publishers Award for Best Published Book, and the Alistair MacLeod Award for Short Fiction. Nova Scotia Book Awards include the Margaret and John Savage First Book Awards (Fiction & Nonfiction), the George Borden Writing for Change Award, the Maxine Tynes Nova Scotia Poetry Award, Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award, and the Dartmouth Fiction Award.

King’s Co-op Bookstore will be on site. Cash bar.

You are cordially invited to the King’s MFA Book Club, an event that celebrates books written by graduates and faculty members of the University of King’s College’s MFA Program.

This month, we will be discussing I Don’t Do Disability, by Adelle Purdham.

Come chat about the book, have some coffee, and meet the author!

In partnership with the University of King’s College’s MFA Program

‘Here is life, rendered with precision and insight.’ — Sharon Bala

The SMU Reading Series and Arts with Impact present a public reading by our Saint Mary’s University 2025 Writer in Residence

Souvankham Thammavongsa
(Winner of the Giller Prize)

Thursday, 6 March 2025 | 7 pm | Atrium 101 (SMU Campus)

Souvankham Thammavongsa is the author of four poetry books and the short story collection How to Pronounce Knife, winner of the Giller prize and Trillium Book Award. Her stories have won an O. Henry prize and appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, and Granta. She lives in Toronto.

Admission free | All welcome | Book sales courtesy of Bookmark

The Winter Writing Weekend, presented by AfterWords Literary Festival, is a series of virtual workshops, craft talks, Q&As and guided writing sessions designed to deepen your writing practice and help you connect with your community during these cold winter days. We’ll talk creativity and productivity with the editors of Bad Artist—Gillian Turnbull, Nellwyn Lampert, Pamela Oakley, and Christian Smith. The amazing Zoe Whittall—novelist, poet, screenwriter and more—delivers our keynote address. Joshua Whitehead presents a craft talk on epistemologies and intertextuality in creative writing. Plus, workshops for writers at all levels with Danny Ramadan, Souvankham Thammavongsa, Francesca Ekwuyasi, and Zoe Whittall. There are also opportunities to write together in short guided sessions with prompts offered by Stephanie Domet, and a final session for checking in and thinking about ways to take The Winter Writing Weekend’s wealth into the rest of your writing life.

Find more details, and register for sessions, at the link above.

Author of My Father Came From Italy and the sequel Summers in Supino: Becoming Italian, as well as the novel Privacy is a Foreign Word, Maria Coletta McLean has received the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal for her contribution to the Canadian literary landscape in 2022. This talk discusses the author’s journey as a writer, from the university years as a ‘mature student’ to travelling to Italy for the first time, and from writing the memoir My Father Came From Italy to being a consultant for the adaptation of this book into a movie.

This talk takes place in McCain room 1170.

Presented by the Italian Studies Program at Dalhousie University.

You are cordially invited to the King’s MFA Book Club, an event that celebrates books written by graduates and faculty members of the University of King’s College’s MFA Program.

This month, we will be discussing Captain Solitude, by R.C. Shaw.

Come chat about the book, have some coffee, and meet the author!

In partnership with the University of King’s College’s MFA Program

Read by the Sea is excited to welcome poet and author Lorri Neilsen Glenn to lead our community of writers in an engaging workshop!

Lorri’s workshop is “Small Stories: A Prose and Poetry Workshop”. This session is open to all writers, from novice to seasoned. In this workshop we will mine magic from the small — we will create prose and poetry out of fleeting moments, glimpses, found objects, photographs, trinkets, curiosities, and more. Bring a memory, a small item, a notebook, and a willingness to play.

Please register for this event by emailing rjreadbythesea@gmail.com

This event is supported by Arts Nova Scotia, the Access Copyright Foundation, the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia, and the Pictou-Antigonish Regional Library.