Pottersfield Prize Author Meet & Greet

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1187 Cole Harbour Road, Dartmouth. More info
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Join us for an informal Saturday morning author Meet & Greet with the Potterfield Prize Winners for Creative Nonfiction!

The first-place winners of the Seventh Annual Pottersfield Prize for Creative Nonfiction were co-authors James MacDuff and Mirriam Mweemba for The Illogical Adventure, and second-place was Matthew R. Anderson for Someone Else’s Saint.

The Illogical Adventure recounts the story of an unlikely cross-cultural, cross-continental romance between two independent-minded travellers during the Covid pandemic and beyond. Mirriam Mweemba is from the small village of Batoka in Zambia, and James MacDuff is a Maritimer who grew up in Moncton and has called Halifax home for over twenty years. The memoir is told from each of their perspectives in an alternating fashion.

In Someone Else’s Saint, seasoned walker and historian Matthew Anderson, hoping to uncover the elusive Saint Ninian, treks the traditional Scottish pilgrim ways associated with the saint, only to find that the trail leads to Nova Scotia, where Ninian’s story intertwines with Acadian, Mi’kmaw, Loyalist, and Gaelic history. Matthew R. Anderson grew up in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, spent almost 35 years in Montreal and now lives in Pomquet, Nova Scotia.

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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