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Sarah Emsley

BIOGRAPHY
Sarah Emsley’s debut novel, The Austens (Pottersfield, 2025) brings to life the story of Jane Austen’s friendship with her sister-in-law Fanny Austen, who lived for a while in Halifax, Nova Scotia with her naval captain husband during the years when Jane was writing Pride and Prejudice and other novels that would eventually make her famous. Sarah is also the author of Jane Austen’s Philosophy of the Virtues (Palgrave, 2005) and a history of St. Paul’s in the Grand Parade (Formac, 1999), the church in Halifax where Jane Austen’s niece Cassy was baptized in 1809.

Sarah has hosted several blog series celebrations of Austen’s work at www.sarahemsley.com, and she edited a collection of essays on Jane Austen and the North Atlantic for the Jane Austen Society (2006). She received her PhD from Dalhousie University, held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford, taught classes on Austen in the Writing Program at Harvard University, and now lives in Halifax with her family.

PUBLICATIONS

The Austens, a novel (Pottersfield, 2025)
Critical edition of The Custom of the Country, by Edith Wharton (Broadview, 2008)
Jane Austen and the North Atlantic (Jane Austen Society, 2006)
Jane Austen’s Philosophy of the Virtues (Palgrave, 2005)
St. Paul’s in the Grand Parade (Formac, 1999)

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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