John Cunningham

BIOGRAPHY
John Cunningham Profile
John Cunningham is a retired journalist and amateur military historian living in Bridgewater, N.S. A 1962 Acadia Science graduate, he began a wide-ranging 37-year media career with the Saint John Telegraph-Journal and The Evening Times-Globe. He was also a news writer at Radio-TV Station, CHSJ, Saint John, the Toronto bureau of The Canadian Press and The Bridgewater Bulletin. During the 1980s, his stories appeared in many regional magazines, including Atlantic Advocate, Halifax Magazine, Atlantic Insight and The Novascotian. He also contributed items to Lookout Magazine, Life and Leisure on the Costa del Sol while living two years in Malaga. Spain. An amateur musician, Cunningham plays drums with the Mahone Bay Legion and Mersey Swing Bands and is a former member of the Bridgewater Fire Department Band. He and his wife Mary have a cottage near Saint Andrews, N.B.

PUBLICATIONS

Cunningham has published two First World War histories, Where Duty Lies, a New Brunswick Soldier in the Trenches of World War 1 , and The Summer the Soldiers Came to Town, Officers and men from across the nation came St. Andrews to train for service in The Great War. His First World War newspaper feature stories have appeared in regional newspapers including The Telegraph-Journal and The Novascotian. He is currently working on Second World War projects centered about the Veterans Guard of Canada and its role at prisoner of war camps at Gravenhurst, Ontario, and Ripples, New Brunswick.

AWARDS

The 2019 Democracy 250 Atlantic Book Society Award for Historical Writing.


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Recommended Experience Levels

The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS) recommends that each workshop’s participants share a level or range of writing / publication experience. This is to ensure that each participant gets value from the workshop⁠ and is presented with information, strategies, and skills that suit their current writing priorities.

To this end, the “Recommended experience level” section of each workshop description refers to the following definitions developed by WFNS:

  • New writers: those with no professional publications (yet!) or a few short professional publications (i.e., poems, stories, or essays in literary magazines, journals, anthologies, or chapbooks).
  • Emerging writers: those with numerous professional publications and/or one book-length publication.
  • Established writers/authors: those with two book-length publications or the equivalent in book-length and short publications.
  • Professional authors: those with more than two book-length publications.

For “intensive” and “masterclass” creative writing workshops, which provide more opportunities for participant-to-participant feedback, the recommended experience level should be followed.

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