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Sharpen Your Setting (virtual) with K.R. Byggdin

Author K.R. Byggdin will help you explore how to build a rich and engaging story world for your characters and readers to inhabit. Whether you write of literary, historical, or speculative fiction, this workshop will offer practical tips on how to evoke a strong sense of place through well-placed research, immersive sensory details, and careful observations of the world around us. Be sure to bring a notepad (or have your writing program open) so we can practice these techniques together!

About the instructor: K.R. Byggdin is the author of Wonder World (Enfield & Wizenty 2022), a ReLit Award finalist and winner of the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. They hold a BA with honours in English and Creative Writing from Dalhousie University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Their writing has appeared in journals and anthologies across Canada, the UK, and New Zealand. Born and raised on the Prairies, they now call Kjipuktuk (Halifax) home.

Recommended experience level: New and emerging fiction writers, including those more experienced in other forms (About recommended experience levels)

Participant cap: 12

Location: Zoom

Date of 1-night workshop: Wednesday, Nov 19, 2025 (7:00pm to 9:00pm Atlantic)

Registration for 2025 General Members: $59

Registration for non-members: $89 (includes discounted fall 2025 General Membership in WFNS)

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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