Joanne Jefferson

BIOGRAPHY
Joanne Jefferson has been passionately involved in the Nova Scotia writing community ever since she helped create Quod Libet, the QEH arts and literary magazine in 1981. She was a contributing editor with the Halifax-based newspaper, Pandora; a founding member of the Oxford Street Writers Group; and she helped establish Community of Writers, a Tatamagouche Centre program. Joanne has also been a teacher at Write Here, Write Now, the Centre’s March Break program for young writers. She facilitates hands-on writing, performance, and zine-making workshops for creators of all ages.

Joanne’s first novel, Lightning and Blackberries, was released by Nimbus Publishing in April 2008. Her short fiction, poetry, and personal essays have been published in various anthologies, including The Vagrant Revue of New Fiction, and her non-fiction work has appeared in Saltscapes, The Chronicle Herald, and The Globe and Mail. She also works as a freelance editor.

Born and raised in Halifax, Joanne now makes her home in West LaHave, Lunenburg County. She received a BA from Acadia and an MA from Dalhousie. er other passions include music, visual art, history, and baseball.


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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