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Michelle Hébert

BIOGRAPHY
Michelle has an MFA in creative non-fiction from the University of King’s College, a degree in journalism, and training and experience in community social work. She combined her journalism skills with her love of history and passion for social justice to write her first non-fiction book, Enriched by Catastrophe: Social Work and Social Conflict after the Halifax Explosion, published by Fernwood in 2007. The Toronto Star named her debut novel, Every Little Thing She Does is Magic (Vagrant 2024),  one of the 20 ‘Must Read’ books of Summer 2024. Her debut memoir, A Good Girl’s Guide to Lying: Losing my Memories, Searching for Truth, & Living with Dissociative Amnesia, will be published by Nimbus in Fall 2026.

Michelle combines her social work and writing skills to offer services for writers. This includes supporting memoirists as they write about difficult subjects, helping writers struggling with imposter syndrome or writer’s block, and guiding writers to go deeper into themselves and their stories. Find out more at her website, michellehebertwrites.com

Michelle lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia/Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq People. She posts about writing, mental health, cake, and her cats on Bluesky (@hfxwordy) and Instagram (michelle.hebert.writes).

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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