WFNS logo ltrmark sticky 100px
WFNS logo ltrmark sticky 100px

Perpetual Astonishment: A Reading for the Equinox

Date:
Time:
-
Venue:
Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia
Location:
1113 Marginal Rd, Halifax. More info
Calendar:
Member event

Join Elliott Gish, Lorri Neilsen Glenn, Clare Goulet, and Margo Wheaton for a celebration of the dawn of spring with poetry and prose.

Elliott Gish is a writer and librarian from Halifax, Nova Scotia. Her work has appeared in the Dalhousie Review, Grain Magazine, The New Quarterly, and many others. Her debut novel, Grey Dog, was published by ECW Press in 2024. Elliott lives in the North End with her partner and the world’s silliest black cat.

Lorri Neilsen Glenn is the author and editor of fourteen books of poetry, essays and scholarly work, most recently The Old Moon in Her Arms: Women I Have Known and Been (Nimbus) and Following the River: Traces of Red River Women (Wolsak and Wynn). Her poetry has appeared in The Malahat Review, CV2, Prairie Fire, Sweetwater, and Juniper, among other publications. Former Halifax Poet Laureate, Lorri is Professor Emerita at Mount Saint Vincent University and a mentor in the University of King’s College MFA program in creative nonfiction.

Clare Goulet is a poet, essayist, editor, and instructor and the coordinator of the Writing Center at MSVU. Her interests include interdisciplinary writing, poetics, metaphor and the work of Jan Zwicky, especially applications of her notion of ‘lyric philosophy.’ Graphis scripta / writing lichen (Gaspereau Press, 2024) is her first collection of poems. Her writing has appeared in The Fiddlehead, Grain, Room, Collateral, Poetry Canada Review, and The Dalhousie Review. She lives and teaches in Kjipuktuk/Halifax, NS.

Margo Wheaton is the author of Rags of Night in Our Mouths (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022) and Wild Green Light (Pottersfield Press, 2021), co-authored with David Adams Richards. Her debut collection, The Unlit Path Behind the House, received the Fred Kerner Award from the Canadian Authors Association and was shortlisted for the J.M. Abraham Award, The Gerald Lampert Award, the Fred Cogswell Award, and the Relit Award. Margo is an associate editor at The Dalhousie Review and currently works as a writing consultant, mentor, and workshop facilitator.

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.

Scroll to Top
WFNS logo ltrmark sticky 100px

Simultaneous Submissions

The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS) administers some programs (and special projects) that involve print and/or digital publication of ‘selected’ or ‘winning’ entries. In most cases, writing submitted to these programs and projects must not be previously published and must not be simultaneously under consideration for publication by another organization. Why? Because our assessment and selection processes depends on all submitted writing being available for first publication. If writing selected for publication by WFNS has already been published or is published by another organization first, copyright issues will likely make it impossible for WFNS to (re-)publish that writing.

When simultaneous submissions to a WFNS program are not permitted, it means the following:

  • You may not submit writing that has been accepted for future publication by another organization.
  • You may not submit writing that is currently being considered for publication by another organization—or for another prize that includes publication.
  • The writing submitted to WFNS may not be submitted for publication to another organization until the WFNS program results are communicated. Results will be communicated directly to you by email and often also through the public announcement of a shortlist or list of winners. Once your writing is no longer being considered for the WFNS program, you are free to submit it elsewhere.
    • If you wish to submit your entry elsewhere before WFNS program results have been announced, you must first contact WFNS to withdraw your entry. Any entry fee cannot be refunded.

Prohibitions on simultaneous submission do not apply to multiple WFNS programs. You are always permitted to submit the same unpublished writing to multiple WFNS programs (and special projects) at the same time, such as the Alistair MacLeod Mentorship Program, the Emerging Writers Prizes, the Jampolis Cottage Residency Program, the Message on a Bottle contest, the Nova Writes Competition, and any WFNS projects involving one-time or recurring special publications.

Recommended Experience Levels

The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS) recommends that participants in any given workshop 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. The “Recommended experience level” section of each workshop description refers to the following definitions used by WFNS.

  • 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, and writing for children and young adults) 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.

For “intensive” and “masterclass” creative writing 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