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Carol Sinclair

BIOGRAPHY
Carol is writing a book entitled, The Darling Cannibals.  She’s also an editor with Editors’ Association of Canada. Her forte is dialogue and character dynamic. She has been an actor and playwright in eight provinces for 35 years.

Recent projects are: The Last Bean Supper, about the loss of women volunteers with the closing of our churches, Far Flung, about immigrants setting up in rural Canada, and Vis Viva, about the women in early science. She was invited as Atlantic rep of the Canadian delegation to an international gathering of female playwrights in Mumbai, India, for her hard-hitting drama, Come Unto Me, about a social worker who turns vigilante when a kiddie porn pervert is publically named and then sent home to await trial.

Carol has combined writing and performance for TV as an issue satirist on Rita Deverell’s Skylight Series for Vision TV. Three early years at Second City forged her conviction that humour propels message.  Screenplays of  her all-female cast comedy Idyll Gossip and the highly romantic comedy, The Summer of the Handley-Page have been funded by Ontario Film Development and Telefilm.  The latter script was also produced for national radio by CBC, as was her one-woman tour de force, Brownie from Hell. She has been, for fourteen years, director of Sinc Ink. She is currently fund-raising to produce her adaptation of ScotiaGiller prize-winner Linden MacInyre’s novel, Causeway.

Ship’s Company Theatre premiered her play, Ferry Tales, her play, Share, and her large-cast comedy, The Summer of the Handley-Page.  Another huge-cast piece, Firefly, was staged at Dal Theatre as well as the Blyth Festival.

She has been writer in residence at St. FX, and with Dalhousie’s Medical Humanities, where she wrote Défense de Fumer, which toured Nova Scotia, Ottawa, Vancouver, Charlottetown, Saint John, and Arviat, Rankin Inlet and Iqaluit, Nunavut.

A multiple recipient of awards from Canada Council’s Writing and Theatre Sections, and the Provincial Councils of Ontario and NS, and the Municipality of the District of Guysborough, her other professionally produced plays include Young Hate (GG nominated) Brownie From Hell  (Crow’s Theatre, Toronto), Firefly (Blyth Festival, Blyth, ON) Idyll Gossip, Presents and Old Boots (Mulgrave Road Theatre, NS), Hansel & Gretel & Handsome & Grateful  (Festival Antigonish).

Professional productions have been as far-reaching as Toscana, Italy; Galway, Ireland; Perth, Australia; Cape Town, South Africa; London, England; Belgrade in the former Yugoslavia; and in Cincinnati, US, as well as in every province in Canada and Nunavut. Carol is a member of WIF-T Atlantic, the Editors’ Association of Canada, Canadian Actors’ Equity Association and ACTRA.

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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, writing for 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.

Occasionally, WFNS uses the phrase “emerging and established writers/authors” to mean ‘writers and authors of all experience levels.’

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 info, strategies, and skills that suit their experience. 

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 uncertain about your experience level with respect to any particular workshop, please feel free to contact us at communications@writers.ns.ca