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Read by the Sea Literary Festival

Date/Time:
at - at
Location:
Pictou
Link:
https://www.ReadbytheSea.ca
Calendar:
Community event

Read by the Sea is a summer literary festival featuring readings by outstanding Canadian authors. The festival includes WordPlay, a fun-filled mini festival for children of all ages; OnWords, an event for middle-grade and young adult readers; Wordstock, a series of literary and storytelling shenanigans; and Main Stage, a day of author readings and Q&A.

June 20, 2025

  • Writers workshop will be hosted by Marjorie Simmins (In Search of Puffins, Pottersfield Press)
  • WordPlay authors are Kevin Sylvester (Hockey Super Six, Scholastic Canada) and Joan Marie Galat (DCB)
  • OnWords authors are Basil Sylvester (Night of the Living Zed, HarperCollins Canada) and Jean Mills (After the Wallpaper Music, Pajama Press)

June 21, 2025

  • Main Stage authors are David A. Robertson (All the Little Monsters: How I Learned to Live with Anxiety, HarperCollins Canada), Vernon Oickle (Nine Crows for a Kiss, Moose House Publications), Charlene Carr (We Rip The World Apart, HarperCollins Canada), and Myna Wallin (Ekstasis Editions)

We do hope you’ll come out to meet these fabulous Canadian authors and show your support! Thanks to Indigo, Chapters, and Coles (Coles Highland Square) for agreeing to be our event bookseller once again!

More announcements will start being made very quickly now, we just wanted to ensure those eager readers had as much time as possible to read the authors’ books in advance!

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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