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Call for Hal-Con 2025 Zine & Writing Prompts

The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS) is excited to exhibit at this year’s Hal-Con Sci-Fi & Fantasy Convention (Halifax Convention Centre, Nov 7 to 9, 2025), where WFNS staff and volunteers will highlight our Charles R. Saunders Prize for speculative fiction and promote our upcoming speculative fiction workshops.

We’ll also encourage Hal-Con appreciation for home-grown sci-fi, fantasy, and horror by distributing our free annual zine (containing samplers of Nova Scotian speculative writing) and “emergency” writing prompts (by Nova Scotian speculative writers).

WFNS invites submissions for the Hal-Con zine and Hal-Con writing prompts from current residents of Nova Scotian who are 19 years of age or older.

  • Hal-Con zine: Submit one piece/excerpt of unpublished or published speculative prose (up to 500 words) or poetry (up to 30 lines, including stanza breaks).
    • If excerpting from a published book, please include its publisher and publication year in the very brief introduction; please also ensure (a) your publication agreement permits re-printing of excerpts or (b) your publisher has granted permission for this re-print should you be selected.
  • Hal-Con writing prompts: Submit any number of original, unpublished writing prompts (up to 50 words) that have a strong sci-fi, fantasy, or horror flavour and that aim to inspire, challenge, or bust writing blocks.

Publication is not compensated, but each zine and prompt contributor will see their name, website, and short bio published alongside their contribution(s) and will receive a digital copy of the Hal-Con zine and contributor-exclusive complete list of the selected writing prompts.

Submit by Oct 23 (11:59pm Atlantic)

For possible inclusion in WFNS’s Hal-Con 2025 zine & writing prompts

Submission form

Please enter the name you commonly use or publish under. This name will be published alongside any zine contribution or writing prompt.
This bio will be published alongside any zine contribution or writing prompt. It may be edited for clarity, brevity, or formatting (e.g., italicization of book titles).
Please enter a URL where readers can find more information about you, more of your writing, or a social media profile. This URL will be published alongside any zine contribution or writing prompt.
For office use only.
Must include city/town, province, and postal code. For office use only.
Drag & Drop Files, Choose Files to Upload
Upload a single submission, of no more than 500 words (prose) or 30 lines (poetry) excluding title, as a single .DOC or .PDF file.

If excerpting from a longer work, add a very brief introduction (up to 50 words) that includes the title of the longer work.

If excerpting from a published work, include its publisher and publication year in the introduction.
Drag & Drop Files, Choose Files to Upload
Upload any number of original, unpublished, speculative-focused writing prompts, each no more than 50 words, in a single .DOC or .PDF file.
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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