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Bretton Loney

BIOGRAPHY
Bretton Loney is a novelist and non-fiction writer who has published three novels and one biography. His 2015 biography, Rebel With A Cause: The Doc Nikaido Story, and his first novel, The Last Hockey Player, a dystopian story published in 2018, were nominated for Whistler Independent Book Awards.

In 2022 he published the novel Joe Howe’s Ghost, a paranormal political thriller.

In 2025 Bretton independently published his third novel, Unsettling Time, a murder mystery set in 1749 amid the first days of the new colony of Halifax.

Bretton is a native of Bow Island, Alberta and has undergraduate degrees from the University of Lethbridge and the University of King’s College in Halifax. He lives in Halifax with his wife, Karen Shewbridge.

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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