Jenni Blackmore

BIOGRAPHY

A new season just beginning! Definitely time to upgrade my bio; even though some things never change life’s experience continually morphs and expands. Have to love that 🙂

Part of me is still the kid from Manchester, England, who always wanted to be a writer, a painter and a farmer, living by the ocean, and much to my amazement, here I am, living my dream on a small island just east of Halifax. Of course I’m greatly influenced by the coastal environment and references to this locale have a way of sneaking into most of my work. I love my reality but I usually can’t resist adding a twist or two of magic to my work, especially my favorite genres of poetry, adult short fiction and childrens fiction.

As an illustrator and writer, I like to combine both these forms of expression, especially in my books for children. Recently, however the denizens of QuackaDoodle Farm, who take up a fair amount of my attention, have been demanding their space on the page and this has resulted in, Permaculture for the Rest of Us (New Society Publishing) a factual account of life here at QuackaDoodle,  my blog site  QuackaDoodle.Wordpress.com and occassional posts on the Mother Earth News Site.

My latest book The Foodlovers’ Garden (New Society) is scheduled for release May 2017 and I was delighted to be able to illustrate this with thirty+ illustrations and forty digital images, all celebrating the wonders of homegrown food. Yum! And oh so colourful.

The second edition of Gully Goes to Halifax flew into my life recently. The story remains mostly unchanged but this edition has twice the page size and all the illustrations are in full colour, so I’m delighted about that.

I believe everyone is writer at heart because of course we all have things to say, ideas to share. This is one of the reasons why I particularly enjoy leading writing workshops for both children and adults but mostly, it’s about the stories that get shared. Surely story is the thread that binds us all together while, equally importantly, poetry tends to magnify and perhaps suggest a new way of seeing both the mundane and the magical.

Please visit me at: Quackadoodle.wordpress.com for sporadic but ongoing news of life down here on the farm

 Jenni has been mentioned in “Our Choice Book List” and “Outstanding Canadian Children’s Books” by the Children’s Book Centre, Toronto. Her recent novel Island of Dead Souls came first in the Atlantic Writing competition YA category.


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Simultaneous Submissions

The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS) administers some programs (and special projects) that involve print and/or digital publication of ‘selected’ or ‘winning’ entries. In most cases, writing submitted to these programs and projects must not be previously published and must not be simultaneously under consideration for publication by another organization. Why? Because our assessment and selection processes depends on all submitted writing being available for first publication. If writing selected for publication by WFNS has already been published or is published by another organization firstcopyright issues will likely make it impossible for WFNS to (re-)publish that writing.

When simultaneous submissions to a WFNS program are not permitted, it means the following:

  • You may not submit writing that has been accepted for future publication by another organization.
  • You may not submit writing that is currently being considered for publication by another organization—or for another prize that includes publication.
  • The writing submitted to WFNS may not be submitted for publication to another organization until the WFNS program results are communicated. Results will be communicated directly to you by email and often also through the public announcement of a shortlist or list of winners. Once your writing is no longer being considered for the WFNS program, you are free to submit it elsewhere.
    • If you wish to submit your entry elsewhere before WFNS program results have been announced, you must first contact WFNS to withdraw your entry. Any entry fee cannot be refunded.

Prohibitions on simultaneous submission do not apply to multiple WFNS programs. You are always permitted to submit the same unpublished writing to multiple WFNS programs (and special projects) at the same time, such as the Alistair MacLeod Mentorship Program, the Emerging Writers Prizes, the Jampolis Cottage Residency Program, the Message on a Bottle contest, the Nova Writes Competition, and any WFNS projects involving one-time or recurring special publications.

Recommended Experience Levels

The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS) recommends that participants in any given workshop 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. The “Recommended experience level” section of each workshop description refers to the following definitions used by WFNS.

  • 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, and writing for children and young adults) 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.

For “intensive” and “masterclass” creative writing 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