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Heidi Tattrie Rushton

BIOGRAPHY
Heidi Tattrie Rushton has been a freelance reporter, event planner, international recruiter, and preschool teacher. Like her Pet Tales protagonist, she has experience working at an animal shelter, was a kid-activist through her writing, and rides the roller coaster of life with anxiety. She lives with her husband, two children, and a menagerie of tiny pets, including a cat-sized dog, two fish, and a snail.

PUBLICATIONS

Pet Tales

Playground Adventure Guide: A journal and activity book to track playgrounds visited and record family memories

Numerous magazine and newspaper articles

AWARDS

2025-2026 Hackmatack Children’s Choice Book Award Nominee

2021 WFNS Joyce Barkhouse Writing for Children Prize for an excerpt from the then-unpublished Pet Tales

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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