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Mark Baker

BIOGRAPHY

Born in England to a teamster’s son and a coal miner’s daughter, G. M. (Mark) Baker now lives in Nova Scotia with his wife, no dogs, no horses, and no chickens. He prefers driving to flying, desert vistas to pointy trees, and quiet towns to bustling cities. As a reader and as a writer, he does not believe in confining himself to one genre. He writes about kind abbesses and melancholy kings, about elf maidens and ship wreckers and shy falconers, about great beauties and their plain sisters, about sinners and saints and ordinary eccentrics. In his newsletter Stories All the Way Down, he discusses history, literature, the nature of story, and how not to market a novel.

PUBLICATIONS

Novels

• The Wrecker’s Daughter, Stories All the Way Down, January 2025

• The Needle of Avocation (Cuthbert’s People, Book Three), Stories All the Way Down, January 2023.
• St. Agnes and the Selkie (Cuthbert’s People, Book Two), Stories All the Way Down, November 2022.
• Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight, Stories All the Way Down, August 2022.
• The Wistful and the Good (Cuthbert’s People, Book One), Stories All the Way Down, April 2022.

Short Fiction and Verse
• The Cattle, Dappled Things, 2018 (2nd place, JF Powers Prize for Short Fiction)
• The World’s Shortest Modern Novel, The Rockford Review, Winter-Spring 2006
• On Claudy Banks, Storyteller, Winter 2005
• The Gypsy Rover, Storyteller, Winter 2004
• Barbara Allen, Solander (the Magazine of the Historical Novel Society), Fall 2004
• Lady Aideen’s Wedding Night, Historical Novel Society Newsletter, July 2004
• For this purpose were all things made, Our Family, Vol. 37, No. 1, January 1986
• The Blessing of the Bonnie Prince, New England’s Coastal Journal, Early Summer, 1985
• A Story whose Name is Forgot, Fantasy Book, Vol. 4, No 2, June 1985
• The Zeal of Thine House, The Atlantic Advocate, Vol. 67, No. 4, December 1976

Nonfiction (as Mark Baker)
• Structured Writing: Rhetoric and Process, XML Press, 2018.
• Every Page is Page One: Topic-based Writing for Technical Communications and the Web, XML Press, 2013.
• Internet Programming with OmniMark, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000
• HTML 4 Unleashed, 2ed., Sams, 1998 (Co-author)

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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, writing for 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.

Occasionally, WFNS uses the phrase “emerging and established writers/authors” to mean ‘writers and authors of all experience levels.’

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 info, strategies, and skills that suit their experience. 

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 uncertain about your experience level with respect to any particular workshop, please feel free to contact us at communications@writers.ns.ca