On May 14th, join Visual Arts Newsin Halifax for a spring launch of editor Shannon Webb-Campbell’s latest poetry collection – Re: Wild Her and the Visual Arts News Spring 2025 magazine. We will also be joined by Geoffrey Webster, an arts writer who wrote the review on Graeme Patterson’s Strange Birds featured in the Visual Arts News Spring 2025 magazine. The event is at Compass Distillers, 2533 Agricola Street in Halifax on May 14, 5 – 7 pm. Free admission, cash bar, and refreshments!
Poetry and Prose from award-winning Victoria-based writers Jenna Butler and Karen Loucks along with Sambro-based poet Kathy Mac and guests. All welcome!
Join author Andrea Currie for the launch of her new book, Finding Otipemisiwak: The People Who Own Themselves, at Halifax Central Library. Come for a reading, an audience Q&A, and a book signing, with books available for purchase.
ANDREA CURRIE is a writer, healer, and activist born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and currently living in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. She is a psychotherapist working in Indigenous mental health and has accompanied the We’koqma’q Residential School Survivors on their healing journey for the past twenty years.
Publication party for Someone Else’s Saint: How a Scottish Pilgrimage Led to Nova Scotia, with author Matthew Anderson, and special musical guests Mary-Beth Carty and Lewis MacKinnon!
Come celebrate community with three fabulous local authors!
Moderator Nicole Johnson leads a thought-provoking discussion with panelists Dr. Carolyn G. Thomas (The Underground Railroad to Nova Scotia), Dr. Claudette Bouman (Failing Forward in Saarland), and Charlene Carr (We Rip the World Apart).
Together, these authors discuss the writing process, their publishing journeys, and how their lived experiences influence their work.
Light refreshments will be served. Books will be available for purchase.
An abandoned house with shadowy windows, a hand that floats in the air, a grey lady that vanishes… these are the “things” that have been witnessed along Nova Scotia’s shores. Join storyteller Cindy Campbell-Stone for this spine-tingling performance of unexplained encounters in folklore. Advanced registration will be required by purchase of a $10 gift certificate to monitor our numbers.
Sweet Ride at Bluenose Lodge
A new play with music by Reid Campbell and Laurel Darnell
Bluenose Lodge, in partnership with Flying Fish Theatre, is pleased to announce eight performances of Sweet Ride.
Inspired by Ann Barry‘s 2017 book, Sweet Ride is the true story of a “grand adventure” taken in the summer of 1943. Four young women embark on a journey by bicycle from Blockhouse, Nova Scotia, to see their musical hero, Don Messer. They realize their dream, sitting in the studio audience during Mr. Messer’s live radio broadcast at the CFCY Studio, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.
Set during the height of World War Two, the adventure recounts 400 miles on one-speed bicycles, blistering heat, torrential rain, roadside aid provided by soldiers and the rides at the Bill Lynch Carnival. Two actors, two musicians, one period bicycle and eight songs tell this charming tale of perseverance in pursuit of a dream.
April 10th, 11th, 12th and 13th (5:45pm – roughly 9pm)
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April 24th, 25th, 26th and 27th (5:45pm – roughly 9pm)
Dinner & show package includes three course meal & gratuities
$115.00 per person plus hst
Our book club is unique! Please read the following:
Each participant will bring a locally authored or published novel they have recently read and can part with. Locally authored will be defined as an author living within the Atlantic Bubble.
During the meeting, each person will take a turn telling everyone what they liked about the book they brought and why the others should read it.
Each book will go into a basket and at the end of the meeting, if a book sparked your interest, you’ll be able to take it home to read.
If there is more than one person interested in reading the book, it will be brought back to the next meeting, for another person’s turn.
We may even host an author occasionally and Dartmouth Book Exchange may even seed the basket once in a while.
All are welcome to come and listen during the meetings, but only the people who brought a book will be guaranteed to leave with a book.
Our Book Club aims to promote local authors, their books, and the writing of reviews. #supportlocalauthors
Join Alice Burdick and Logan Kennedy for a celebratory afternoon of poetry at the newly reopened LaHave River Books!
Alice Burdick is the author of six books of poetry, including the Fall 2024 title Ox Lost, Snow Deep. Her poems and essays have appeared in multiple anthologies, chapbooks, folios, broadsides, cookbooks, and films. She leads workshops for children and adults and is a mentor, freelance editor, proofreader, manuscript assessor, and broadcaster. She lives in Lunenburg.
Logan Kennedy is a translator, writer, and editor. She has published two poetry chapbooks with the Little Books Collective, a community-building micropress based in Lunenburg. Informed by twenty years of German-English translation work in the fields of art, architecture, theatre, film, and history, Logan’s creative writing, including The Translation Chain Project (forthcoming with Guernica Editions) is nourished by the vibrant literary community of Nova Scotia’s South Shore.
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
