WFNS logo ltrmark sticky 100px
WFNS logo ltrmark sticky 100px

Maureen St. Clair

BIOGRAPHY
Maureen is an artist, peace educator, community facilitator, conflict resolution trainer, activist, writer and life-long learner.Maureen is deeply passionate about connections, entanglements, intersections, unravelling and weaving of relationships and the power of deep receptive compassionate listening in transforming interpersonal and community based conflict. As a collaborator, Maureen co-creates courageous inclusive spaces enabling people collectively to do the work of self and community building and healing with a social justice and trauma informed lens. Maureen’s novel, Big Island, Small was published by Fernwood Publishing in 2018 and won the Nova Scotia Atlantic Writers Award and the Beacon Award for Social Justice Literature.

PUBLICATIONS

A Novel: Big Island, Small

https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/big-island-small

 

Seeds of Radical Education at the Coady Institute: Collection of Personal Essays

https://www.pdltd.net/publications

 

AWARDS

Winner of the 2016 Beacon Award for Social Justice Literature

and winner of the 2015 Atlantic Writer’s Competition

Scroll to Top
WFNS logo ltrmark sticky 100px

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