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Kathy-Diane Leveille

BIOGRAPHY
Kathy-Diane Leveille is a former broadcast journalist with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, who discovered the only thing more thrilling than reading a great suspense novel is trying to write one. Her short story collection, Roads Unravelling (Sumach Press), was published to critical acclaim after a selection from its pages Learning to Spin was adapted to radio drama for CBC’s Summer Drama Festival. The tale Showdown at the Four Corner’s Corral was revised for the stage and performed by New City Theater in Saint John. Her debut suspense novel, Let the Shadows Fall Behind You, was published by Kunati Books April 2009.  Standing in the Whale’s Jaw followed in 2013 from Tightrope Books. She is a member of Sisters in Crime, Crime Writers of Canada and the TWUC.

Kathy-Diane’s prose has been published in a number of literary journals including Grain, Room of One’s Own, Oklahoma Review, Pottersfield Portfolio and The Cormorant, as well as various anthologies such as Water Studies: New Voices in Maritime Fiction (Pottersfield Press) and New Brunswick Short Stories (Neptune). Along with being awarded numerous Canada Council Art Grants, Kathy-Diane’s fiction won the Short Grain Contest (dramatic monologue) in 2000 and was listed as a finalist in the Writers’ Union of Canada Short Fiction Contest in 2002. Her poetry received Honorable Mention in the Stephen Leacock International Poetry Competition. A humorous commentary I Know What You Didn’t Do Last Summer aired on CBC’s national morning show with Shelagh Rogers.

“Her settings and characters – their hopes and fears, verbal and behavioural ticks, even their smells – are keenly observed.” – The Globe and Mail

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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