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Events

Slay Your Manuscript: Self-Editing

Date:
Time:
-
Venue:
Margaret Hennigar Library
Location:
135 N Park St, Bridgewater. More info
Calendar:
Member event

Congratulations you have a draft of your novel!

It’s time to slash, invigorate, and finesse your words, into a well rounded story before you hire an editor.

N.L. Blandford presents a workshop that will provide you with some tools, and hands on experience, to help you:
– Identify what to filter out of your novel.
– How to show a reader what is happening versus telling them.
– You don’t like to be told what to do, why would a reader?
– Assess your dialogue and emotion mechanics. – For example, are all of those adverbs necessary?
– Use the five senses.
– Analyze your word choice and potential use repetition
– Identify if your exposition is getting in the way of your story.

REGISTRATION REQUIRED: call the Margaret Hennigar Library at 902 543-9222

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The Shadow in the Window: Ghost Stories of Nova Scotia

Date:
Time:
-
Venue:
Dartmouth Book Exchange
Location:
1187 Cole Harbour Road, Dartmouth. More info
Link:
https://dartmouthbookexchange.ca/events/
Calendar:
Community event

Back by popular demand, The Shadow in the Window: Ghost Stories of Nova Scotia

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. Gift certificates can be purchased in person, credit card by phone at 902-435-1207 or by etransfer at dbex1187@gmail.com

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An Evening of Lichen Arts & Artists

Date:
Time:
-
Venue:
Pavia Gallery - Espresso Bar & Café
Location:
995 Herring Cove Road, Herring Cove. More info
Calendar:
Member event

Join NS visual artists Jennifer Escottt, Frankie MacAulay, and Jacqueline Steudler, with writer-in-residence Clare Goulet for an informal celebration, chat, and reading of all things lichen. Drawing on the Purcells Cove/Herring Cove Backlands, each has their own reason and process for working with these astonishing collaborative organisms. Whether you’re an artist, poet, naturalist, or simply lichen-curious, come join the conversation. Free, all welcome. In support of the Backlands conservation.

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Jaime Burnet launches milktooth

Date:
Time:
-
Venue:
Cafe Lara
Location:
2347 Agricola Street, Halifax. More info
Link:
https://nimbus.ca/store/milktooth.html
Calendar:
Member event

Please join us to celebrate the launch of Jaime Burnet’s new novel, milktooth!

When Sorcha meets the volatile Chris— with her buttoned-up plaid, 90s heartthrob hair, and grand romantic gestures—things get serious. Fast. But when Sorcha becomes pregnant and Chris’s abuse escalates, Sorcha realizes she must escape the life they’ve built together, just as she escaped her own stifling family years before.

Jaime will be joined by authors Tiffany Morris and Elliott Gish. Books will be available for purchase.

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A Spring Launch of Art and Poetry

Date:
Time:
-
Venue:
Compass Distillers
Location:
2533 Agricola Street, Halifax. More info
Calendar:
Member event

On May 14th, join Visual Arts News in 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!

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Andrea Currie launches Finding Otipemisiwak: The People Who Own Themselves

Date:
Time:
-
Venue:
Halifax Central Library
Location:
5440 Spring Garden Road, Halifax. More info
Link:
https://halifax.bibliocommons.com/events/6807d189a92893579f381254
Calendar:
Member event

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.

Andrea Currie launches Finding Otipemisiwak: The People Who Own Themselves Read More »

Books on the Breeze: Lana Shupe, Workshop

Date:
Time:
-
Venue:
Westville Public Library
Location:
2042 Queen Street, Unit 3, Westville. More info
Link:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1806191550129693/
Calendar:
Community event

Join Read by the Sea for another edition of Books on the Breeze, this time with children’s author Lana Shupe!

Lana’s workshop “Writing Picture Books with Heart” will explore the importance of the picture book as an age-defying genre. For more detailed workshop details, please visit the Facebook event.

This workshop is free to attend. Please register by emailing rjreadbythesea@gmail.com.

Books on the Breeze is presented by Read by the Sea in partnership with the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia and the Pictou-Antigonish Regional Library, and supported by Arts Nova Scotia and the Access Copyright Foundation.

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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