Writers' Council Profiles
Browse profiles below. To find a specific Writers’ Council member, please use our site-wide search function above.
A.J.B. (John or Jay) Johnston
Email: readersturn@gmail.com
A.J.B. (John) Johnston is the author or co-author of books and museum exhibits, as well as articles in scholarly journals, magazines and newspapers. He was made a chevalier of France’s Ordre des Palmes Académiques in recognition of his body of work on Louisbourg and other French colonial topics. The best known of his history books is Endgame 1758, which won a Clio award from the Canadian Historical Assocation and was short-listed for the Dartmouth Book Award.
His two latest books, his 20th and 21st, will appear in 2020. First up will be Kings of Friday Night: The Lincolns (Nimbus). Then it will be Ancient World, New World: Skmaqn—Port-la-Joye—Fort Amherst (Acorn), co-authored with Jesse Francis.
In 2018, John released The Hat, a YA novel that offers a 21st-century take on the Acadian Deportation, and Something True, which was inspired by the real-life adventures of Katharine McLennan in late 19th and early 20th-century Cape Breton and in France during the First World War.
In 2017, he was Writer-in-Residence at the Center for the Writing Arts in Fairhope, Alabama. Back in 2016, John participated as a mentor to emerging writer Linda MacLean in the Alistair MacLeod Mentorship Program. From mid-April to mid-May 2017 he combined with Sal Sawler and Norma Jean MacPhee to offer sessions for the WFNS entitled “So You Want to be Published” in Halifax, Antigonish, Wolfville, Sydney and Yarmouth.
John has written three novels in the Thomas Pichon series: Thomas, A Secret Life in 2012; The Maze in 2114 and Crossings in 2015.
Back in 2013, Ni’n na L’nu: The Mi’kmaq of Prince Edward Island (Acorn), won three awards: “best-published Atlantic Book”, best PEI Non-Fiction, and a PEI Heritage Award. The French version of the book, Ni’n na L’nu: Les Mi’kmaq de l’Ile-de-Prince-Édouard, is now available from La Grand Marée (Tracadie Sheila, NB).
Released in 2015 was Grand Pré, Landscape for the World (Nimbus), co-written with Ronnie-Gilles LeBlanc.
Most of his books are available as e-books.
John writes exhibits as well, including the “Vanguard: 150 Years of Remarkable Nova Scotians” for the Nova Scotia Museum and the ground floor of the Black Cultural Centre. The award-winning travelling exhibition Ni’n na L’nu: The Mi’kmaq of Prince Edward Island opened at the Confederation Centre in Charlottetown and then travelled to the Museum of Canadian History in Gatienau, Quebec and other subsequent venues. More recently, John developed the storyline and texts for the revitalization of the Colchester Historeum in Truro. That exhibit opened officially in early 2016.
More information on John can be found at ajbjohnston.com and on Facebook at A J B Johnston, Writer. John is on Twitter at @ajbjohnston and on Instagram at AJBJohnston.
John donates his papers to the Beaton Institute of the Cape Breton University.
PUBLICATIONS
Grand Pré, Landscape for the World, 2015. Nimbus Publishing. ISBN 978-1-77108-271-6
AWARDS- Endgame 1758 was shortlisted for the Darmouth Book Award for Non-Fiction.
- The Canadian Historical Association awarded ‘Endgame’ a Clio prize as the best book on the history of Atlantic Canada published in 2007
- Ni’n na L’nu: The Mi’kmaq of Prince Edward Island (Nimbus Publishing), short-listed for best-published book, Atlantic Book Awards, 2014.
- Ni’n na L’nu: The Mi’kmaq of Prince Edward Island (Acorn Press), short-listed for best non-fiction book, PEI Book Awards, 2014.
- Biographical entry in Canadian Who’s Who since 2009.
- Both the exhibit entitled Ni’n na L’nu: The Mi’kmaq of Prince Edward Island and the book of the same name published by Acorn Press received a PEI Heritage Award, 2014.
- Alcuin design award (second place) for Phoenix Fortress, 1991.
- Ni’n na L’nu: The Mi’kmaq of Prince Edward Island selected “best-published Atlantic book” at 2014 Atlantic Book Awards.
- Ni’n na L’nu: The Mi’kmaq of Prince Edward Island selected Best PEI Non-Fiction Book at 2014 Atlantic Book Awards.
Adam Foulds
I am a poet and novelist originally from the UK, now a Canadian resident. I’ve published four novels and a poetry collection and bunch of other things. I’ve won a number of literary awards, including being shortlisted for the Booker Prize. I’ve taught creative writing at workshops and universities in Britain, Canada, and elsewhere.
PUBLICATIONS
Books:
DREAM SEQUENCE, novel, February 2019, Jonathan Cape, UK/ June 2019, FSG, US.
IN THE WOLF’S MOUTH, novel, February 2014, Jonathan Cape/ June 2014, FSG, US.
THE QUICKENING MAZE, novel, Cape, 2009.
THE BROKEN WORD, narrative poem, Cape Poetry, 2008.
THE TRUTH ABOUT THESE STRANGE TIMES, novel, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 2007.
Other Publications:
(All publications are in print with possible online formats also).
Article on Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet, Foxed Quarterly, Forthcoming.
Article on Daniil Trifonov Concert in Montreal, Times Literary Supplement, May 20, 2022
‘Ghosts’ Short Story, Granta 159, Spring 2022.
Article/ Review on Solitude and Loneliness, Times Literary Supplement, May 29 2020
Article on Nabokov’s The Gift, Slightly Foxed Quarterly, Summer 2019.
Article on music and the writing process, Literary Review Canada, May 2019.
Article on Brexit, Globe and Mail newspaper, Canada, May 2019.
Essay, ‘Swifts.’ Granta 142, Animalia, Winter 2018.
Review/ article on Denis Johnson’s fiction, Financial Times, Jan 19, 2018.
Review, Basil Bunting’s Collected Poems, Areté Magazine, issue 51.
Review, The Burning Ground, Adam O’Riordan, Guardian Newspaper, Jan 25th 2017.
Article, Geoffrey Hill’s Collected Poems, Slightly Foxed Magazine, 2017, tbc.
Catalogue Introduction for Paula Rego, The Last King of Portugal And Other Stories, exhibition, Marlborough Fine Art, 2014.
Essay for On Life Writing, Zachary Leader ed, OUP 2014. Version of a lecture given at the Huntington Library 2012 Life Writing Conference.
The Broken Word, radio play adaptation, BBC Radio 4, autumn 2013.
‘A World Intact’, extract from In The Wolf’s Mouth, Granta 123: Best Of Young British Novelists, April 2013.
‘Dreams Of A Leisure Society,’ short story, Granta 119, ‘Britain’ issue, 2012.
‘A Kindness,’ short story, The New Statesman magazine, 2012.
Introduction to The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, Vintage Classics, Spring 2011.
Essay on ‘St. Jerome’ by Farrukh Beg, miniature painting in the Museum Of Islamic Art, Doha, Qatar, as part of the ‘Reflections’ project edited by Ahdaf Soueif, Bloomsbury Qatar foundation, 2011.
‘The Rules Are The Rules,’ short story in PEN/ O Henry Prize Stories 2011, Anchor, Spring 2011.
‘The Rules Are The Rules,’ short story Granta ‘Sex’ Issue, 2010.
Translations of various books and publications into a number of languages, including French, Spanish, Russian, Italian, Hungarian, Czech, Arabic and Hebrew.
AWARDSLonglisted for the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize for Fiction.
Shortlisted for the 2015 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction.
Named as one of the New Generation Poets, 2014.
Winner of the E M Forster Award, American Academy of Arts and Letters, May 2013.
Named one of Granta’s Best Of Young British Novelists, April 2013.
Winner, European Union Prize For Literature, 2011.
Winner 2010 Encore Award for The Quickening Maze.
Winner of South Bank Show Literature Award 2009 for The Quickening Maze.
Shortlisted for Man Booker Prize 2009 for The Quickening Maze.
Shortlisted for 2008 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction for The Quickening Maze.
Longlisted for the 2009 Dublin Impac Award for The Quickening Maze.
The Quickening Maze chosen among Books Of The Year, Guardian newspaper and as one of the fifteen best novels of 2010 by The New Yorker magazine.
Winner 2008 Costa Poetry Prize for The Broken Word.
Winner 2008 Somerset Maugham Award for The Broken Word.
Shortlisted for 2008 Sunday Times Young Writer Of The Year Award for The Broken Word.
Shortlisted for 2008 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for The Broken Word.
Winner 2007 Sunday Times Young Writer Of The Year Award for The Truth About These Strange Times.
Winner 2007 Betty Trask Award for The Truth About These Strange Times.
Adele Megann
Adele Megann is a Newfoundlander based in Halifax. Her short fiction has been published in many Canadian and US periodicals and anthologies. She has won several awards–including the 1995 Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award–and has given over thirty readings and interviews.
Over the years, Adele has been involved in the writing community by organizing readings, and teaching creative writing. Adele lived many years in Calgary, where she was part of the Pack of Liars writing workshop, and was a fiction editor of Dandelion magazine.
After moving to Nova Scotia in 1999, Adele participated in Writers in the Schools throughout the province. She performed at Playwrights in Performance Cabarets. She has written curriculum guides for Exodus Theatre Society, and coordinated their school matinees. In addition to the literary publication credits listed here, she has also contributed several articles to an Irish magazine called Set Dancing News, and does some corporate writing.
Adele’s day jobs usually involve teaching. She has taught diverse subjects–including music, drama and literacy–to children and adults, including those with disabilities. She sings, and plays several instruments, usually in the context of traditional Irish music. She lives with an assortment of humans and animals.
PUBLICATIONS
PERIODICALS
“Triptych: What I Learned From My Cat,” Paperplates (Toronto), vol.5, no.3, 2003.
“Thief,” Prairie Journal of Canadian Literature, no.37, 2001.
“Ophelia and Rosencrantz Discuss Censorship,” Mississippi Review, vol.29, no.3, Summer 2001.
“Claudius Looks,” Mississippi Review, vol.29, no.3, Summer 2001.
“Overlooking Cove,” Gaspereau Review (Wolfville), no.8, Summer 1999.
“Living Colour,” Pottersfield Portfolio (Halifax), vol.17, no.2, Winter 1997.
“Spirits,” Forum: Journal of the Calgary Women’s Writing Project (Calgary), Fall/Winter 1995, vol.6, no.1.
“The Saga of Mary Marie,” paperplates (Toronto), 1995 vol.2, no.3.
“Palimpsest” (Contest Runner-up), Filling Station (Calgary), vol. 1, no. 1, 1994.
“Les uns et les autres,” Blue Buffalo (Calgary), vol. 10, no. 3, 1992.
“Single Girl,” Secrets from the Orange Couch (Edmonton), vol. 4, No. 2, Fall 1991.
ANTHOLOGIES
“Twelfth Night,” La Cucina Egeriana: Time, Tastes and Tables. Indiana: Notre Dame Center for Pastoral Liturgy, [1997].
“Living Colour,” Taking Off the Tinsel. Edmonton: Rowan Books, 1996.
“The Missing You,” Boundless Alberta. Edmonton: NeWest Press, 1993.
- Nomination for the Journey Prize, 2002
- Honourable Mention in Novel category, 24th Annual Atlantic Writing Competition, 2001
- Recipient, Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award, 1995
- First runner-up, 2-20-200 Contest, Filling Station, 1994
Alec Bruce
Email: alecb128@gmail.com
Alec Bruce is a multi-award-winning writer and author. A former reporter, columnist, and editor for The Globe and Mail, Report on Business, Financial Times of Canada, and the Moncton Times & Transcript, he’s a senior contributor to Atlantic Business Magazine and Saltscapes Magazine. He writes extensively on business, politics, and society in the Atlantic provinces for major news organizations in Canada and the United States. He is the author of Keeping the Faith: The Story of Laura McCain (designed and printed by Goose Lane, Fredericton, 2013), along with two other commissioned biographies of prominent Canadians and their families. His new book, The Cooperators: The People Behind the Rebirth of a Nova Scotia Movement 1949-2024 from Pottersfield Press, Halifax, is slated for release in the spring of 2024. ”Informative, insightful, engaging, and startlingly entertaining, here is the untold story of the rise and rise again of Nova Scotia’s original ‘people’s’ movement. Bruce, who holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction from the University of King’s College/Dalhousie University lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, with his wife Vivien.
PUBLICATIONS
Alec Bruce is regularly published in:
- Atlantic Business Magazine
- Saltscapes
- Atlantic Salmon Journal
- National, regional and community newspapers in Canada through the Local Journalism Initiative.
Alec Bruce’s professional awards include:
- Bronze, “Writer of the Year” in the 2022 International RMA Awards.
- Merit, “General Feature” in the 2022 International RMA Awards.
- Silver, “Commentary” in the 2014 Atlantic Journalism Awards.
- Silver, “Magazine Article” in the 2014 Atlantic Journalism Awards.
- Silver, “Commentary” in the 2012 Atlantic Journalism Awards.
- Gold, “Regular Column” in the 2011 International TABBIES Awards
- Silver, “Profile Article” in the 2011 Atlantic Journalism Awards.
- Gold, “Regular Column” in the 2010 International TABBIES Awards.
- Gold, “Commentary” in the 2010 Atlantic Journalism Awards.
- Gold, “Magazine Article” in the 2010 Atlantic Journalism Awards.
- Merit, “Feature Article” in the 2009 International TABBIES Awards.
- Silver, “Business Reporting” in the 2009 Atlantic Journalism Awards.
- Silver, “Magazine Article” in the 2009 Atlantic Journalism Awards.
- Gold, “Commentary” in the 2008 Atlantic Journalism Awards.
- Silver, “Magazine Article” in the 2007 Atlantic Journalism Awards.
- Silver, “Magazine Article” in the 2007 Atlantic Journalism Awards.
- Gold, “Commentary” in the 2006 Atlantic Journalism Awards.
- Finalist, 2005 Kenneth R. Wilson National Business Writing Awards.
Alice Burdick
Email: ingenburdick@gmail.com
Alice Burdick lives and writes poetry in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia and co-owned the former Lexicon Books in Lunenburg. Alice moved to Halifax in 2002 from Toronto, Ontario, where she was born and raised. She has also lived in Espanola, Vancouver, and on the Sechelt Peninsula in BC.
Burdick has been involved with the small press community in Canada since the early 1990’s, when she was co-editor, with Victor Coleman, of The Eternal Network. This very small ongoing imprint produced chapbooks, including several of her own works, such as Signs Like This, Fun Venue, and Voice of Interpreter. Her work has been published by other small presses in Canada, including: Proper Tales Press (a Time, My Lump in the Bed: Love Poems for George W. Bush); Letters Press (Covered); and BookThug (The Human About Us). It also has appeared in various magazines, such as Hava LeHaba (from Tel Aviv, Israel), Event Magazine, Canadian Poetries, Two Serious Ladies (from the US), Dig, What!magazine, subTerrain, fhole, This Magazine, and Who Torched Rancho Diablo? From 1992-1995, Alice was assistant coordinator of the Toronto Small Press Fair. She has also done numerous readings over the years in many different venues, including the Ottawa International Writers Festival, The Scream in High Park in Toronto, and the Halifax Word on the Street.
Alice’s fourth collection of poetry, Book of Short Sentences, came out in the spring of 2016 from Mansfield Press. Her last book, Holler, was released in April 2012, following Flutter, which came out in Fall 2008 (both Mansfield Press). Two collaborative poems have shown up in Our Days In Vaudeville by Stuart Ross and 29 Collaborators (Mansfield Press, Fall 2013). Her poems have appeared in Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry (The Mercury Press, Fall 2005), Surreal Estate: 13 Canadian Poets Under the Influence, An Anthology of Surrealist Canadian Poetry (The Mercury Press, Fall 2004), and in Pissing Ice: An Anthology of ‘New’ Canadian Poets, (BookThug, 2004, as well as other anthologies. Her first perfect-bound book was Simple Master, published in 2002 by Pedlar Press.
”Deportment”, a book of selected poems from the early 1990s onward, was released by Wilfrid Laurier University Press in the autumn of 2018. Her essays have appeared in three recent anthologies: “Home” from MacIntyre Purcell, 2018, “Gush” from Frontenac House, 2018, and “Locations of Grief” from Wolsak & Wynn, 2020.
Her poem ”Terms and Conditions” was shortlisted for the first Lemon Hound Poetry Prize in 2014.
Read more about Alice Burdick in interviews conducted by Alex Porco on Open Book Toronto and on Lemon Hound and in gallery form here. You can watch and listen to Alice read some poems on a beach here.
PUBLICATIONS
Best East Coast Jams, Pickles, Preserves & Breads. Formac Publishing, 2021. ISBN 9781459506763
Grandma’s Cookies, Cakes, Pies and Sweets: The Best of Canada’s East Coast. Formac Publishing, 2020. ISBN 9781459506398
Deportment: The Poetry of Alice Burdick. Selected and introduced by Alessandro Porco. Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2018. ISBN 9781771123808
Book of Short Sentences. Mansfield Press, 2016. ISBN 9781771261098
Holler. Mansfield Press, 2012. ISBN 9781894469708
Flutter. Mansfield Press, 2008. ISBN 9781894469418
Simple Master. Pedlar Press, 2002. ISBN 9780968652275
Anthologies:
Locations of Grief: an emotional geography. Wolsak & Wynn, 2020. ISBN 9781989496145
My Nova Scotia Home: Nova Scotia’s best writers riff on the place they call home. MacIntyre Purcell Publishing Inc., 2019. ISBN 9781772761115
Aubade: Poetry and Prose from Nova Scotian Writers. Boularderie Island Press, 2018. ISBN 9781926448268
GUSH: Menstrual Manifestos for Our Time. Frontenac House, 2018. ISBN 9781927823798
Our Days in Vaudeville, by Stuart Ross with 29 Collaborators. Mansfield Press, 2013. ISBN 9781771260244. Two poems in collaboration with Stuart Ross.
Rogue Stimulus: The Stephen Harper Holiday Anthology For A Pro-Rogued Parliament, Mansfield Press. 2011. ISBN 9781894469487
Shift and Switch: New Canadian Poetry. The Mercury Press, 2005. ISBN 9781551281162
To Find Us: words and images of Halifax. Halifax Regional Municipality Press, 2005. ISBN 9780968726235
Surreal Estate: 13 Canadian Poets Under the Influence. The Mercury Press, 2004. ISBN 9781551281094
Chapbooks, Broadsides, and Folios:
Poils d’ivresse. Translation of “Pleasure Bristles” collaborative book, by Éditions Vanloo of France, 2020.
A Holiday for Molecules. above/ground press, 2019.
Pleasure Bristles. Collaborative chapbook with poet Gary Barwin. above/ground press, 2018.
FLOOD. Poem in folio form in collaboration with artist Drew Klassen. Letterpress, drawing in ink, rubber stamps, 2018.
Chore Choir. Puddles of Sky Press Chapoem, 2016.
Minola Review. Print anthology from The Minola Review online journal, 2016.
BafterC Volume 6 Number 1, The Barlow Response Unit. Anthology, BookThug, 2013.
A Trip Around McFadden. Festschrift, for David W. McFadden’s 70th birthday. Coach House printing, 2010.
3 poems. Laurel Reed Press, 2007
Pissing Ice: An Anthology of ‘New’ Canadian Poets. BookThug, 2004
My Lump in the Bed: Love Poems for George W. Bush. Proper Tales Press, 2004
Moe-Town. Proper Tales Press Product, 2003
Psychic Rotunda. Oversion, 2003
Winter Walk. 1cent #359, 2003
Guessed Book. Anthology from Ottawa International Writers Festival, A Onion Printsmop, October 2002
The Human About Us. BookThug, 2002
A Letter to His Excellency Nicky Drumbolis. Anthology, 1997.
AB: a special issue of CB containing the work of Alice Burdick, CB #4 – poems & drawings, 1995
a Time. Proper Tales Press, 1995
Covered. twobitter 54, Letters Press, 1994
Fun Venue. The Eternal Network, 1994
Signs Like This. The Eternal Network, 1994
Big Tomatoes. PUSHYbroadside 5, 1993
Voice of Interpreter. The Eternal Network, 1993
A Discord of Flags: Canadian Poets Write About The Persian Gulf War. Anthology (1991; reissued 1992)
Journals and Magazines:
My poetry and prose has appeared, since 1992, in these publications, in print and/or online: Arts Atlantic, Canadian Poetries, CB Magazine, CKLN-FM Anniversary Literary Supplement, The Coast Magazine, EVENT Magazine, fhole, Dig, Hardscrabble, Hava LeHaba, Matrix Magazine, The Minola Review, Oversion, Push-Machinery, subTerrain, This Magazine, Tongue Tide, Two Serious Ladies, What!magazine, Who Torched Rancho Diablo?, Work Seen Magazine, Understorey Magazine.
Alice Walsh
Email: alice.walsh02@bellaliant.net
Alice Walsh writes fiction and nonfiction for adults and children. Her short stories and articles have been published in newspapers, magazines and literary journals. She is the author of thirteen books, many of which have been nominated for or won awards. A number of her books have been listed as Best Books for Children and Teens in Canada. Her YA novel Pomiuk; Prince of the North (Dundurn 2005) won the Ann Connor Brimer award.
Alice graduated from St. Mary’s University with degrees in criminology and English, and from Acadia with a master’s in Children’s Literature. She has worked as a preschool teacher, volunteer probation officer, creative writing instructor, and hospital ward clerk.
PUBLICATIONS
Books for Children
Something’s Wrong With Kyla’s—-Nimbus Publishing (1990)
Uncle Farley’s False Teeth—Annick Press (1995)
Heroes of Isle aux Morts—Tundra Books (2000)
Pomiuk; Prince of the North—Beachholme (2000)
A Sky Black With Crows—Red Deer Press (2008)
A Long Way From Home—Second Story Press (2012)
Buried Truths—Creative Publishing (2013)
A Change of Heart—Nimbus Publishing—2016
Adult Non-fiction
Mermaid: A Puppet Theatre in Motion—Gaspereau Press (2005)
Adult Mystery
Analyzing Sylvia Plath—Thomas & Mercer (2012)
Last Lullaby—Vagrant Press (2017)
Death on Darby’s Island—Vagrant Press (2021)
Something’s Wrong With Kyla’s Mother (Nimbus Publishing 1990,) Canadian Children’s Book Centre Our Choice.
Heroes of Isle aux Morts (Tundra Book 2000), Canadian Children’s Book Centre Our Choice; Hackmatack finalist.
Pomiuk; Prince of the North (Beachholme 2000), Ann Connor Brimer Award. Canadian Children’s Book Centre Our Choice; Hackmatack finalist.
A Sky Black with Crows (Red Deer Press 2008,) Best Books for Children and Teens in Canada; shortlisted for Ann Connor Brimer Award.
A Long Way from Home (Second Story Press 2012), Best Books for Children and Teens in Canada; Hackmatack finalist.
A Change of Heart ( Nimbus Publishing2016), Best Books for Children and Teens in Canada; Hackmatack finalist.
Death on Darby’s Island (Vagrant Press 2021), Finalist for the Howard Engel award for best crime novel set in Canada.
Alison DeLory
Email: aldelory@eastlink.ca
Alison DeLory is a writer, editor, publisher, teacher, and consultant in Halifax.
She’s the author of an adult novel called Making it Home (Vagrant/Nimbus Publishing, 2019); two children’s chapter books called Lunar Lifter (Bryler Publications, 2012) and Scotia Sinker (Sketch Publishing, 2015), and a story in the YA creative non-fiction anthology Becoming Fierce: Teen Stories IRL (Fierce Ink, 2014).
Alison has written news, feature stories and essays for publications including The Globe and Mail, Chicago Tribune, Chatelaine, Today’s Parent, Ryerson Magazine, Dalhousie Magazine, Medical Post, Halifax Magazine, and Canadian Traveler.
Alison was a finalist twice in the Atlantic Writing Competition and won prizes for her blog and poetry at Mount Saint Vincent University. She served as a judge for the 2017 Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award and as a reader for the 2016 CBC Creative Nonfiction Prize. She’s been a presenting author twice at Word on the Street Halifax (2015 and 2019).
She has two degrees from Mount Saint Vincent University including a masters of public relations, and was editor of the alumni magazine Folia Montana there for four years. Her third degree is from Ryerson University in journalism.
Alison has been a part-time instructor at Mount Saint Vincent University in communication studies since 2013. She’s also taught at the Nova Scotia Community College and taught workshops through the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS). She participated in the WFNS Writers In The Schools program from 2009 to2017, bringing writing workshops into more than 50 classrooms province-wide. Alison has served as council member at the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS) since 2009.
Alison enjoys working with emerging authors on their manuscripts, and also performs substantive, structural and copy-editing for various clients including creative writers, business writers, and academics.
She is currently the Associate Director of Communications for the University of King’s College where she writes content for print and digital publications, and is editor of the alumni newsletter and Tidings Magazine.
AWARDS
1. Canadian Progress Club Halifax Cornwallis, Women of Excellence Award, Communications and Public Affairs, 2014
2. President’s Award, MSVU, 2013
3. Finalist, Atlantic Writing Competition, 2013 & 2011
4. Best Blogger, MSVU, 2011
5. Ekphrasis, Art Prompts Writing Poetry Award, MSVU, 2011
Alison Smith
Email: alison@aesmithwriter.com
Alison Smith is the author of three books of poetry and one chapbook from Gaspereau Press. Her most recent collection, This Kind of Thinking Does No Good, was awarded the 2019 J.M. Abraham Award for Atlantic Poetry and was shortlisted for the 2020 Nova Scotia Masterworks Arts Award. She has written for radio, the stage, and has taught poetry workshops in prison, schools and other community settings. Alison lives in Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia.
PUBLICATIONS
Full-Length Poetry Collections
2018 This Kind of Thinking Does No Good. Gaspereau Press. Kentville, NS.
2004 Six Mats and One Year. Gaspereau Press. Kentville, NS.
2001 The Wedding House. Gaspereau Press. Kentville, NS.
Chapbooks
2009 “Fishwork, Dear.” Gaspereau Press. Kentville, NS.
2013 CBC Poetry Prize finalist
2019 JM Abraham Atlantic Poetry Prize winner
2020 NS Masterworks Arts Award finalist
Allison LaSorda
Allison LaSorda’s writing has been nominated for National Magazine Awards and the CBC Poetry Prize, and selected as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2021. A recipient of scholarships from the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and the Vermont Studio Center residencies, she is a contributing editor at Brick, A Literary Journal. Her work has appeared in Literary Hub, The New Quarterly, The Malahat Review, Scientific American, The Walrus, CNQ, The Globe and Mail, Southern Humanities Review, Hazlitt, and other venues. Allison lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
AWARDS
National Magazine Award nomination in Essay category, 2023
Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2021
Longlist CBC Poetry Prize 2019
National Magazine Award nomination in Personal Journalism category, 2018
Allison Lawlor
Email: allisonlawlor@eastlink.ca
Allison is a freelance writer. Since 2003, she has worked from her home in Prospect.
While studying journalism at Ryerson University, she spent a summer working as a reporter for The Rural Voice, a farming magazine based in Blyth, Ont. She happily travelled the countryside talking to farmers and hearing stories about the latest breed of cattle and amazing new varieties of corn and cauliflower.
From Blyth, she moved on to work as a reporter at several daily newspapers in Ontario, including The Brantford Expositor and The Standard in St. Catharines. After landing a summer internship at The Globe and Mail in Toronto, she stayed for another two years writing and editing for the paper’s website.
In 2003, she returned to Nova Scotia, the place she had fallen in love with as an English and Russian student at the University of King’s College a decade earlier.
Her work has been published in newspapers and magazines. She has also written seven non-fiction books.
Her first book 250 Years of Progress: Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency was published by Nimbus in 2005. Her second book, Rum-Running was published by Nimbus in 2009. It was the first book in a series called Stories of Our Past.
In 2015, The Roar of the Sea, a book ghostwritten by Allison, was published by Boulder Publications. Her book, “The Saddest Ship Afloat”- The Tragedy of the MS St. Louis was published by Nimbus in 2016.
Broken Pieces, a children’s non-fiction book about the Halifax Explosion, appeared in bookstores just before Dec. 6, 2017, the 100th anniversary of the explosion. Broken Pieces was nominated for a 2019 Silver Birch Award by the Ontario Library Association and a 2019-2020 Hackmatack Children’s Choice Book Award.
Allison also works as a writing coach with journalism students at the University of King’s College.
Allison Maher
Allison Maher is a former manager of marketing for a company that invented “spy gear”. She now resides on a small farm in rural Nova Scotia.
I, The Spy is her first juvenile novel. I the Spy has been short listed for a Red Cedar Reader’s Choice Awared and is listed on Kayak Magazine’s Recommended Reading List.
Her second novel. Time Flies When You’re Chasing Spies, was short listed for a Hackmatack Award.
Allison Watson
Email: adwtsn@gmail.com
Allison Watson is the author of Transplanted: My cystic fibrosis double lung transplant story. She was born with cystic fibrosis and grew up in New Brunswick. After undergoing a double lung transplant and subsequently getting post-transplant lymphoproliferative disorder, she hopes her days of medical turmoil are in her past. Allison has a BSc in biology and recreational therapy from Dalhousie University. She loves board games, reading, and hiking.
Amanda Peters
Email: info@amandapetersauthor.com
Amanda Peters is a writer of Mi’kmaw and settler ancestry. She is the winner of the 2021 Indigenous Voices Award (IVA) for unpublished prose and a participant in the 2021 Writers Trust Rising Stars program. Her debut novel The Berry Pickers has been shortlisted for the 2023 Writers Trust of Canada Atwood Gibson Award, the 2023 Barnes and Noble Discovery Prize, the 2023 Carnegie Medal of Honour for Fiction and the 2024 Forest of Reading Evergreen Award from the Ontario Library Association. Her work has appeared in the Antigonish Review, Grain Magazine, The Alaska Quarterly Review, the Dalhousie Review, and fillingStation Magazine. Her short story collection Waiting for the Long Night Moon will be published in the summer of 2024. Amanda has a certificate in creative writing from the University of Toronto and she is a graduate of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe New Mexico. Amanda teaches in the Department of English and Theatre at Acadia University. She lives and writes in the Annapolis Valley Nova Scotia with her fur babies Holly and Pook.
PUBLICATIONS
The Berry Pickers
AWARDS2024 Carnegie Medal of Excellence in Fiction Shortlist
2023 Barnes and Noble Discovery Prize for Debut Novel
2023 Amazon.com Best Book of the Year Finalist
2023 Barnes and Noble Best Book of the Year – 2nd Place
2023 Short List for the Atwood Gibson Fiction Award
2021 Indigenous Voices Award for Unpublished Prose
2021 Rising Star Award from the Writers Trust of Canada
Nova Scotia Writers Federation Nova Writes Emerging Writers 2017, Short Fiction, Winner
Ami McKay
As a writer of fiction, essays, musical theatre, radio documentaries and dramas, Ami is a dedicated artist who brings creativity and passion to her work. With over 15 years of experience in musical theater she has scored several productions, including The Clouds, Mother Courage, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest.
She believes that the power and magic of a good story can only come through the strength of the characters, plot and place. Her work has been described as “a balance of stories – observation and internal musings, matter of factness and fancy.” Her radio documentary for the CBC, Daughter of Family G won an Excellence in Journalism Award at the 2003 Atlantic Journalism Awards and her novel, Given, was awarded second place in the 27th annual Atlantic Writing Competition.
Born in Indiana, Ami currently lives in an old farm house in Scots Bay, Nova Scotia. She’s an avid blogger and is an active member of PEN Canada as well as an Associate Editor of Fiction for The Antigonish Review.
Her first novel, The Birth House was published by Knopf Canada in 2006 as their New Face of Fiction’s 10th anniversary title (publication by Luitingh Sijthoff – Holland, and Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag -Random House Germany to follow).
AWARDS
March 2004 27th annual Atlantic Writing Competition – H.R. (Bill) Percy Prize for Unpublished Novel – Second Place for Given.
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May 2003 Atlantic Journalism Awards – Excellence in Journalism Award (Finalist in the Feature Writing for Radio Category, Daughter of Family G)
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April 2003 Gabriel Award Nomination, Daughter of Family G.
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January 2003 Finalist in the Writers’ Union of Canada Short Prose Competition – Illumination.
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November 2002 – May 2003 Apprentice in the WFNS Mentorship Program (paired with Richard Cumyn).
Amy Spurway
Email: AmyLSpurway@gmail.com
Amy Spurway was born and raised in Cape Breton. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in English from UNB and a degree in Radio and Television Arts from Ryerson University. She lives in Dartmouth with her husband and three daughters.
Andre Fenton
Email: Andre.Fenton@Live.ca
Andre Fenton is an award-winning African Nova Scotian author, spoken-word artist, screenwriter and arts educator. He is a recipient of the Emerging Artist Recognition Award at the 2022 Creative Nova Scotia Awards, and is the author of three young adult fiction novels. Worthy of Love was the bronze recipient in The Coast’s 2018 Best of Awards, and ANNAKA, that was Digitally Lit’s 2022 recipient of the Community & Place Award. Andre is also the author of The Summer Between Us, that won Gold in The Coast’s 2022 Best of Awards. Andre has facilitated writing and performance workshops at over 50 schools across Nova Scotia, and has represented Halifax at seven national poetry festivals across Canada. He is currently screenwriting the film adaptation of his novel ANNAKA that is being produced by Fine Devils Films. Andre is represented by Meridian Artists, and based in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
PUBLICATIONS
- Ode to Teen Angst (2016)
- Worthy of Love – Formac Publishing (2018)
- ANNAKA – Nimbus Publishing (2019)
- The Summer Between Us (2022)
- ANNAKA – Film Adaptation – Fine Devils Films (TBA)
- Best Book/Gold Winner in The Coast Best Of 2022 – The Summer Between Us
- Emerging Artist Recognition Award – Creative NS Awards 2022
- ANNAKA – Community & Place Award – Digitally Lit
- Spirit of The Slam Award – Canadian Festival of Spoken Word 2015
- Youth Inspiration Award – Emerging Lens Film Festival 2015
- School of Applied Arts & New Media Waterfront Campus William F. White International Inc Award 2015
Andrea Miller
Email: aclairemiller@yahoo.ca
Andrea Miller is the author of Awakening My Heart: Essays, Articles, and Interviews on the Buddhist Life (Pottersfield Press), My First Book of Canadian Birds (Nimbus Publishing), and The Day the Buddha Woke Up (Wisdom Publications). She’s also the deputy editor and a staff writer at Lion’s Roar magazine (formerly called the Shambhala Sun) and the editor of three anthologies for Shambhala Publications, including Buddha’s Daughters: Teachings from Women Who Are Shaping Buddhism in the West.
Miller has an MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia, a Bachelor of Journalism from the University of King’s College, and a Bachelor of Arts in English literature from Dalhousie University. Her writing has appeared in The Best Women’s Travel Writing series, the Best Buddhist Writing series, The Chronicle Herald, The Globe and Mail, Saltscapes, The Antigonish Review, Prairie Fire, and a wide range of other publications. Miller lives in Halifax with her husband and two children.
Andrew Battershill
Email: andrew@dragnetmag.net
Andrew Battershill is the author of two novels, Pillow (Coach House Books, 2015) and Marry, Bang, Kill (Gooselane Editions, 2018). Pillow was longlisted for the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize and shortlisted for the Kobo Emerging Writer Award. Marry, Bang, Kill was named one of The Globe and Mail’s top 100 books of 2018. Recently, he was the 2018-2019 Writer-in-Residence at the Regina Public Library, and the 2019 Writer-in-Residence at the Richmond Public Library. He is married to the poet and essayist Suzannah Showler. He is currently enrolled in the Masters of Library and Information Science at Dalhousie University with the goal of working in public service.
PUBLICATIONS
Book Publications
Pillow: a novel (Coach House Books, 2015)
Marry, Bang, Kill: a novel (Gooselane Editions, 2018)
AWARDSCanada Council for the Arts, Explore and Create Grant, 2018-2019
Scotiabank Giller Prize, Longlist, 2016
Kobo Emerging Writer Award, Shortlist, 2015
Sunburst Award for Literature of the Fantastic, Longlist, 2015
Andrew Wetmore
Email: info@moosehousepress.com
Andrew Wetmore was born in Digby, spent many years away, and now lives in Clementsport. He was a development officer in the early days of the WFNS, working on the Dramatists’ Coop project to improve the quality and increase the visibility of plays written in Nova Scotia.
As a playwright and screenwriter, Wetmore has written over 60 scripts, many of which have had productions across Canada and the US.
Since 2019, Wetmore has been the editor at Moose House Publications, which publishes books written in, or about, rural Nova Scotia.
PUBLICATIONS
Andria Hill-Lehr
Email: andriahill@yahoo.ca
Andria Hill-Lehr is a freelance writer and author of two non-fiction books: Mona Parsons: From Privilege to Prison, from Nova Scotia to Nazi Europe (Nimbus Publishing 2017) and A Mother’s Road to Kandahar (Pottersfield 2008). She is an entertaining public speaker who enjoys storytelling.
Andy Tolson
Email: info@andytolson.com
Andy Tolson has been a boy magician, drummer, propmaker, photojournalist, and a filmmaker. He lives in the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia, in a big old house with his family and two cats named Olive and Ottoline. How to Kidnap a Mermaid is his debut middle-grade fantasy, and the sequel will be released in Fall 2025.
Andy Verboom
Andy Verboom is publisher of Collusion Books, co-founding editor of long con magazine, and author of six poetry chapbooks, most recently DBL (knife fork book, 2020).
His poetry has won Frog Hollow’s Chapbook Contest and Descant’s Winston Collins Prize, been shortlisted for CV2’s Young Buck Prize and Arc’s Poem of the Year, and appeared in CAROUSEL, Prism, The Puritan, Vallum, and elsewhere.
Angela Mombourquette
Angela Mombourquette is the adult non-fiction editor at Nimbus Publishing, a freelance writer, and the author of 25 Years of 22 Minutes: An Unauthorized Oral History of This Hour Has 22 Minutes. She is also the co-author, with Len Wagg, of We Rise Again: More Stories of Hope and Resilience from Nova Scotia during the Covid-19 Pandemic. Both books were published by Nimbus. She has a Master of Journalism from the University of King’s College and has worked as a sessional instructor in the undergraduate journalism program there.
PUBLICATIONS
- Former editor of Atlantic Books Today and former associate editor, Saltscapes
- Features writer – Broadview, The Walrus, J-Source, Chronicle Herald, Halifax Magazine, Saltscapes, Living Healthy in Atlantic Canada, Atlantic Books Today, Nova Scotia Policy Review, Yelp, CanadianHealthcareNetwork
- Monthly columnist – Halifax magazine, 2014-2015
- Weekly columnist – Chronicle Herald, Saturday Arts & Life, 2012-2014
- Weekly columnist – Halifax Community Herald, 2008-2012
- Canadian Church Press Awards of Merit, 2019
- Dave Greber Freelance Writers Magazine Award, 2018
- George Cadogan Memorial Outstanding Columnist Award, Canadian Community Newspaper Awards, 2012
Angela J Reynolds
PUBLICATIONS
Threshold by Angela J. Reynolds
The Better to See You With in Children and Libraries : ALSC Journal
Angus MacCaull
Angus MacCaull has writing in Prelude, CV2, filling Station, The Lindenwood Review, Hamilton Review of Books, and Ricepaper Magazine. He is also the author of three picture books for children. A longtime resident of Nova Scotia, he now lives with his young family in Toronto.
He is currently working on Ghost Tones, a memoir about mental health, music, and loss. The book tracks the various therapies, mindfulness practices, and drugs he took over a ten-year period after being told at sixteen that he could be one of the best clarinetists in the world—but then losing music due to tinnitus.
Ann Graham Walker
Email: anngrahamwalker@gmail.com
Ann Graham Walker is a professional writer with nearly 30 years experience. Her journalism career began with the 4th Estate, a legendary Halifax weekly newspaper.
After moving on to CBC Radio, Ann was a current affairs and local morning show producer, working in the Cape Breton and Halifax CBC stations. CBC listeners will know the diversity this job entailed, producing, researching and writing stories on a huge range of subjects.
Her next job turned out to be quite different, but no less fast-paced. Ann became the principal writer for former Nova Scotia premier, the late Dr. John Savage. During her tenure in the Premier’s Office she did everything from writing around three hundred speeches a year to producing a weekly cable tv-show and acting as liason with the media.
In 1997 she ended her temporary soujourn in provincial politics and wrote a book for the Greater Halifax Partnership entitled Halifax – Canada’s Smart City. She began freelancing, as a regular contributor to the quarterly magazine, Nova Scotia Open to the World, as well as for other Halifax publications. She then took up what turned out to be a two and a half year post as the Atlantic Region Staff writer for national weekly newspaper, The Medical Post.
In addition to her work as a journalist, Ann has published poetry in the Gaspereau Review, Voices Down East, PRISM International, and in Vancouver Island’s Leaf Press. In July 2002, she put her snow shovels away, packed her garden tools and her laptop and moved to the west coast, together with her Irish husband, a border collie and three cats. There, she began taking master classes with poet Patrick Lane, published poems in numerous chap books Lane edited, I and published a chap book of her own :The Puzzle at the End of Love (Leaf Press, 2012). In 2008 she completed a two year degree and obtained an MFA in Creative Writing from the Port Townsend campus of Goddard College.
A true child of the global village, Ann grew up in Cuba, Mexico, Argentina, Australia and the United States where she attended university. She now lives in Nanoose Bay, BC (on BC’s Vancouver Island) where she works as a freelance journalist and is completing her novel about growing up in Argentina: The Girl in the Garden.
Ann is currently also very busy volunteering as the president of the Federation of British Columbia Writers.
AWARDS
Finalist in malahat Open Season Awards and Prism Poetry Prize
Anna Quon
Email: anna.quon@gmail.com
Middle -aged, mixed-race and Mad, Kjipuktuk (Halifax) writer Anna Quon got a late start as a novelist and poet. And though she’s travelled as far as Russia and the Czech Republic to work on her writing, she’s still not sure she’s got the hang of it.
Happily, her novel fist novel Migration Songs found a home with Invisible Publishing and was released in the Fall of 2009. Her second novel, Low, followed in 2013; and in 2022, Invisible published her third novel Where the Silver River End, making a trilogy with her first two unrelated stories by bringing their main characters together in Bratislava, Slovakia
As well as working with traditional publishers, Anna enjoys making her own poetry books and has self-published an adult colouring book, Kindness. in 20017. She also loves to make short animated films of her poetry, including in 2020 her climate grief poem, Polar Bear, thanks to a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts . Her first professionally published chapbook of poetry Body Parts was released in the Spring of 2021 by Gaspereau Press.
Before she decided to call herself a writer, Anna held a number of different jobs, including day care teacher, fundraiser/ outreach coordinator for a shelter for victims of family violence, volunteer coordinator of a disability organization, and communications assistant for a provincial not-for-profit. She currently facilitates a writers’ group and an arts-related guest speaker series for local mental health organizations. Anna hopes the jobs title of novelist, poet, filmmaker and writing workshop facilitator will stick longer than any of them.
For samples of her writing check out her blog, https://annaquon.wordpress.com/
Find examples of her visual art at https://ekeandutterarts.ca/ and check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YP_kjrslJbw&t=66s
for an example of one of her poem films.
PUBLICATIONS
Novels
Migration Songs (ISBN 9780978218560)
Low (ISBN 97819743325)
Where the Silver River Ends (ISBN 9781988784878)
Poetry
Body Parts (ISBN9781554472222)
AWARDSpoem film Missing Women winner of Audience Favourite award for short shorts at Parrsboro Film Festival, 2017
Migration Songs shortlisted for the Dartmouth Book Award, 2010
Anne Carter
Email: annelaurelcarter@rogers.com
Picture Books, MG Non-Fiction and Fiction, YA fiction.
Anne divides her time writing and teaching between Toronto Island and the LaHave River, Nova Scotia.
AWARDS
CLA Book of the Year Award for Children 2009 and 2005
Jane Addam’s Honor Award for Peace 2009
Mr. Christie Gold Award Best Picture Book in Canada 2003
Anne C. Kelly
Email: annecarmelkelly59@gmail.com
Anne C. Kelly has loved to read and write for as long as she can remember. Her first publication was a class newspaper which she wrote with a friend in Grade four. She especially enjoys reading historical fiction and books about characters who discover who they really are after going through challenges in life.
Anne is an English teacher at heart. She taught English-as-an-Additional-Language (EAL) to adult newcomers to Canada for over twenty years. She loves learning about different cultures and traditions. She always says that she learned more from her students than they ever learned from her!
Anne’s first novel, Jacques’ Escape, was published by Trap Door Books in June 2019. Jacques’ Escape, which tells the story of a fourteen-year-old Acadian boy who is deported with his family to Massachusetts in 1755, is a middle reader for children aged 9-12. It was shortlisted for the 2020-21 Hackmatack Children’s Choice Book Award.
PUBLICATIONS
Jacques’ Escape Trap Door Books (Nevermore Press) 2019
“A Sigh and a Wish” Inside: Thoughts from a Pandemic (Nevermore Press) 2022
“Peggy and the Thief” Beyond Time and Place ((Linden Hill Publishing) 2004
AWARDSNomination for Hackmatack Children’s Choice Award 2021
Joyce Barkhouse Writing for Children Prize 2001
Anne Lévesque
Anne Lévesque’s poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in Canadian and international journals and anthologies. Her novel ‘Lucy Cloud’ was published in 2018. She lives on the west coast of Unama’ki – Cape Breton Island.
Anne Louise MacDonald
Anne Louise MacDonald was born with a passion for horses and a vivid imagination. She retired in 2015 from a lifetime of working with animals. Her days are now spent enjoying her two horses and her raggedy black dog, painting, creating driftwood sculptures … and writing.
She had three well received picture books published early on. Then her first YA novel, The Ghost Horse of Meadow Green, became an international best seller and is printed in five languages. Seeing Red is a companion book, second in her ‘Hug a Horse Farm’ series, which continued with horses, kids with real-life problems and a bit of the paranormal. She also published the non-fiction self-illustrated My Natural Horses.
Over the years she has presented writing workshops for children and adults, and participated in many writing festivals and conference presentations. She is currently entertaining one on one writers retreats at her hobby farm in beautiful Antigonish County.
PUBLICATIONS
Nanny-Mac’s Cat -Ragweed Press 1995
The Memory Stone -Ragweed Press 1998, Nimbus 2002
The Dog Wizard -Ragweed Press 1999
The Ghost Horse of Meadow Green -Kids Can Press, 2005
Seeing Red -Kids Can Press, 2009
My Natural Horses -Hug a Horse Farm, 2009
AWARDSNominated for the 2006 Snow Willow Award; ‘The Ghost Horse of Meadow Green’
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Shortlisted for the 1999 Ann Connor Brimer Award for Children’s Literature; ‘The Memory Stone’
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Our Choice selection, Canadian Children’s Book Centre; ‘The Memory Stone’
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Resource Links The Year’s Best list; ‘The Memory Stone’
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Our Choice selection, Canadian Children’s Book Centre; ‘The Dog Wizard’
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Our Choice selection, Canadian Children’s Book Centre; ‘Nanny-Mac’s Cat’
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Resource Links The Year’s’ Best list; ‘Nanny-Mac’s Cat’
Anne Louise O’Connell
Email: anne@ocpublishing.ca
An author, developmental book editor and partner publisher, Anne can be found working on her latest novel, mentoring other authors, publishing books or leading writing workshops. Anne’s first book, @Home in Dubai – Getting Connected Online and on the Ground, was traditionally published in the UK by Summertime Publishing (2011) and re-released by Springtime Books. Her first novel, Mental Pause launched on International Women’s Day, March 8, 2013, and won an Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY). Her next novel, Deep Deceit, launched March 8, 2015 and is the first in a planned series called Deep Mysteries. Deep Freeze is scheduled for release March 2025. While living as an expat in Dubai and then Thailand, she was a content creator and a regular contributor to the Wall St. Journal Expat Blog and Global Living Magazine. In 2015, she also published a collection of expat and travel stories called Swimming with the Elephants and Other Adventures. Upon her return to Canada in 2016, after 23 years of expat life, she established OC Publishing in Halifax, NS.
PUBLICATIONS
@Home in Dubai (2011) – non-fiction
Mental Pause (2013) – fiction/mystery
Deep Deceit (2015) – fiction/mystery
Swimming with Elephants and Other Adventures (2015) – anthology of travel/expat living stories
Global Living Magazine – Expats Giving Back – a 3-part feature series (2013)
Global Living Magazine – Healthy Living the Expat Way – a 3-part feature series (2014)
Global Living Magazine – various features – Beach Clubs on Phuket, Island Hopping for a Day, Cape Yamu (2012-2014)
Wall St. Journal – How to Make a Transition Abroad Easier on the Kids (2015)
Wall St. Journal – Looking for a Job Abroad? Expats who Found Work Tell All (2015)
Wall St. Journal – Midnight Phone Calls: On Expats Living Far from Aging Parents (2015)
Wall St. Journal – In Music, Expat Teens in Thailand Find a Home Away From Home (2015)
AWARDSIndependent Publisher Magazine (IPPY) for Mental Pause – bronze for best adult fiction
Anne Simpson
Anne Simpson has been a writer-in-residence at the University of British Columbia, the Saskatoon Public Library, the Medical Humanities Program at Dalhousie University, and the University of New Brunswick, among others. She has also been a faculty member at the Banff Centre.
She writes novels, poetry, and essays. Four of her ten books have been Globe & Mail Best Books. Her short fiction has been awarded the Journey Prize, while her third novel, Speechless, won the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. Her second poetry collection, Loop, was awarded the Griffin Poetry Prize. She has also written two books of essays. The Marram Grass: Poetry and Otherness explores poetry, art, and empathy, while Experiments in Distant Influence: Notes and Poems looks at friendship, courage, and community.
PUBLICATIONS
Speechless (Novel), Freehand, 2020
Experiments in Distant Influence: Notes and Poems (Essays), Gaspereau, 2020
Is (Poems), McClelland & Stewart, 2011
The Marram Grass: Poetry and Otherness (Essays), Gaspereau, 2009
Falling (Novel), McClelland & Stewart, 2008
Quick (Poems), McClelland & Stewart, 2007
Loop (Poems), McClelland & Stewart, 2003
Canterbury Beach (Novel), Penguin, 2001
Light Falls Through You (Poems), McClelland & Stewart, 2000
AWARDSWinner of the 2020 Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award for Speechless.
Longlisted for the 2009 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for Falling.
Winner of the 2009 Dartmouth Fiction Award for Falling.
Winner of the 2008 Pat Lowther Poetry Award for Quick.
Finalist for the 2008 Atlantic Poetry Prize for Quick.
Winner of the 2004 Griffin Poetry Prize for Loop.
Finalist for the 2003 Governor-General’s Award, Poetry, for Loop.
Nominated for the Pushcart Prize XXIX for Loop.
Finalist for the 2002 Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award for Canterbury Beach.
Winner of the 2001 Atlantic Poetry Prize for Light Falls Through You.
Winner of the 2001 Gerald Lampert Award for Light Falls Through You.
Finalist for the 2001 Pat Lowther Award for Light Falls Through You.
Winner of the 1999 Bliss Carman Poetry Award.
Winner of the 1997 Journey Prize (shared with Gabriella Goliger) for “Dreaming Snow.”
Annick MacAskill
Annick MacAskill is a writer and translator based in Halifax. Her poems have appeared in literary journals and anthologies across Canada and abroad, including Best Canadian Poetry, The Stinging Fly, Canadian Notes & Queries, the Literary Review of Canada, Grain Magazine, Prism International, The Fiddlehead, Room Magazine, Plenitude, Arc Poetry Magazine, Lemon Hound, and Versal. Her first full-length poetry collection, No Meeting Without Body (Gaspereau Press, 2018), was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and shortlisted for the J. M. Abraham Poetry Award. Her second collection will be published by Gaspereau in the spring of 2020.
MacAskill’s poetry has also been longlisted for the CBC’s Canada Writes Poetry Prize, longlisted for The Fiddlehead‘s Ralph Gustafson Prize, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is a member of Room Magazine‘s editorial collective.
Anthony Thomson
Email: tony.thomson@acadiau.ca
After a long career teaching at Acadia University and writing sociology, social thought, and criminology, Tony has pivoted to fiction. His debut novel, About Face: A Mystery was released on September 1st by Moose House Publications in Annapolis Royal.
Tony was born in Halifax’s Hydrostone district and raised on Lawrencetown Beach. He graduated from Graham Creighton High School in Cherry Brook NS and Dalhousie University, Halifax, and has a PhD in social and political science from the University of Cambridge. He is Professor Emeritus at Acadia.
Among other projects, he has researched small-town and rural policing in the Annapolis Valley.
PUBLICATIONS
About Face: A Mystery (Annapolis Royal, NS: Moose House Publications, 2022).
The Making of Social Theory: Order, Reason, and Desire (Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 2006; 2010)
Modern Social Thought: An Introduction (Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press, 2015)
Bethany R. Myers
Email: beth.r.myers@gmail.com
Always in the mood for a good scare, B. R. MYERS spent most of her teen years behind the covers of Lois Duncan, Ray Bradbury, and Stephen King. She is the author of the international bestseller, A Dreadful Splendor, winner of the Mary Higgins Clark Award, as well as numerous YA books. A member of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia, she lives in Halifax with her family—and there is still a stack of books on her bedside table.
PUBLICATIONS
BUTTERFLIES DON’T LIE. Nimbus Publishing. September 2014
GIRL ON THE RUN. Nimbus Publishing. September 2015
THE NEFERTARI HUGHES MYSTERY SERIES
ASP OF ASCENSION (NEFERTARI HUGHES MYSTERY #1). Blue Moon Publishers. April 2017
DIADEM OF DEATH (NEFERTARI HUGHES MYSTERY #2) Blue Moon Publishers. May 2017
MEDALLION OF MURDER (NEFERTAIR HUGHES MYSTERY #3). Blue Moon Publishers. September 2018
THE NIGHT SHIFT SERIES
NIGHT SHIFT (NIGHT SHIFT SERIES #1) Amazon November 2020
BLACK FRIDAY (NIGHT SHIFT SERIES #2) Amazon November 2020
FINAL SALE (NIGHT SHIFT SERIES #3) Amazon November 2020
ROGUE PRINCESS. Swoon Reads/Macmillan Publishing. January 2020
ADULT FICTION
A DREADFUL SPLENDOUR. Harper Collins/William Morrow Publishing. August 2022
THE THIRD WIFE OF FARADAY HOUSE Harper Collins/William Morrow Publishing August 2024.
AWARDS
Mary Higgins Clark Award Winner – Edgar Awards 2023 (A Dreadful Splendour)
Barbara Emodi
Email: babsann.emodi@gmail.com
My background is in journalism, political communications, and teaching. I have over a decade of experience teaching creative non-fiction in the Department of Communications at Mount Saint Vincent University. Currently I am a panelist on CBC Halifax radio’s longest running political panel “The Spinsters.”
I write non-fiction and fiction, primarily cozy mysteries set in Nova Scotia. I work with a US-based publisher who thinks this province is “exotic.”
I have extensive experience working as a developmental editor with a wide variety of new and emerging authors across many genres. I have learned so much from other writers. With my own experience teaching writing and in the traditional publishing industry, I enjoy helping other authors bring out the best in their own work.
PUBLICATIONS
Non-fiction
SEW the garment-making book of knowledge (C&T Publishers, SF California)
Stress-free sewing solutions (C&T)
Vintage sewing machine attachments for the modern sewist (self-published)
Former contributing editor Threads magazine (Taunton Press, Newton CT 1994-1999 numerous articles)
Fiction:
Gasper’s Cove Mysteries (C&T Publishers) ongoing series
Crafting for Murder
Crafting Deception
Crafting with Slander
Crafting a Getaway
Seasons of Gasper’s Cove (self-published 2023)
Panic in the Pansies
Inspection Deception
Potions and Notions
Last Stitch Effort
Serial mystery fiction Love of Quilting magazine
Various short pieces in anthologies
Basma Kavanagh
Basma Kavanagh is a poet, visual artist, and letterpress printer who lives and works in Nova Scotia, in Mi’kma’ki. She produces artist’s books under the imprint Rabbit Square Books. She has published two collections of poetry, Distillō (Gaspereau, 2012), and Niche (Frontenac, 2015), which won the 2016 Lansdowne Prize for Poetry, and was a finalist for the 2019 NS Masterworks Arts Award. The book-length poem, Ruba’iyat for the Time of Apricots (Frontenac 2018), was shortlisted for the 2019 J.M. Abraham Poetry award, and won the Book Publishers Association of Alberta’s Robert Kroetsch Award for Poetry Book of the Year. Basma has taught workshops and courses on poetry, printmaking, bookbinding, and letterpress, and has formally and informally mentored emerging artists and writers. She has been an artist in residence at the Penland School of Crafts, the Banff Centre, and the Minnesota Center for Book Arts.
PUBLICATIONS
Books
2018 Ruba’iyat for the Time of Apricots (poetry), Frontenac House Press, Calgary AB ISBN 978-1-927823-81-1
2015 Niche (poetry collection), Frontenac House Press, Calgary AB ISBN 978-1-927823-30-9
2012 Distillō (poetry collection), Gaspereau Press, Kentville NS ISBN 978-1-554471-15-7
Anthologies
2018 “Entangled with Light”,in Aubade: Poetry and Prose from Nova Scotia Writers, Boularderie Island Press, Boularderie, NS ISBN 978-1-926448-26-8
2018 “Mittelschmerz” in Gush: Menstrual Manifestos for our Times, Frontenac House Press, Calgary AB ISBN 978-927823-79-8
2011 “Perfume” in Perfect Dragonfly, Red Dragonfly Press, Northfield, MN ISBN 978-1-890193-33-1
2010 “Transformers”, in Decomposition from Lost Horse Press, ID ISBN 978-0-9844510-0-5
Awards
Rubai’yat for the Time of Apricots
2019 Winner BPAA Robert Kroetsch Award for Poetry
2019 Shortlist J.M. Abraham Poetry Award
Niche
2019 Finalist Nova Scotia Masterworks Art Award
2016 Shortlisted BPAA Robert Kroetsch Award for Poetry
2016 Winner Lansdowne Prize for Poetry
Other
2019 Co-winner Gwendolyn MacEwen Poetry Prize
2017 Shortlisted Gwendolyn MacEwen Poetry Prize
2017 Shortlisted New York Center for Book Arts Chapbook Prize
2014 Finalist CBC Poetry Prize “Coda”
Beth Ann Knowles
Originally from Dartmouth, Beth Ann completed a science degree at Dalhousie University. She works as an online ESL Teacher and coaches youth soccer in the summer. Beth Ann is passionate about the environment and enjoys being active. Early morning runs, bike rides, paddles, and yoga are her favourite things. She lives on the South Shore of Nova Scotia with her husband, two sons, and their dog, Gordie.
PUBLICATIONS
Beth Ann’s debut publication was a children’s book which she wrote and illustrated. Row Bot, was published in 2017 by MacIntyre Purcell. Said about Row Bot…
“Through clever text and hilarious illustrations, Knowles invites children to the sheer fun of wordplay. Younger kids will relish the sounds and pictures, while older ones grasp the comic subtleties. A highly original and fun book.” -Kate Lum, multi-awardwinning author, of What! Cried Granny and Princesses Are Not Just Pretty
Recently, her first non-fiction title was published by Pottersfield Press. The Kimchi Experiment:Naked Parent Teacher Meetings and Other Exploits of a Canadian in South Korea is a humorously written tale of two Canadian newlyweds as they test their bond and their fortitude teaching English in a rural South Korean farming community.
AWARDS
Beth Ann was the esteemed winner of two poetry contests when she was in grade 6. Her mother thinks that’s still relevant.
In 2020 she won the H.R. (Bill) Percy Creative Non-Fiction Prize for a story called The Hwagae Bath House.
In 2021 her manuscript, The Kimchi Experiment, won second place in the Pottersfield Prize for Creative Nonfiction.
Bethany Lake
Bethany Lake is a playwright, novelist, and freelancer from Nova Scotia. As a playwright, she has had three of her plays produced in Halifax. Her play, No Animal, has been published in The Furious Gazelle, a literary magazine based in New York City.
She is a regular contributor to Rue Morgue magazine, where she has conducted interviews with artists such as Mark Soper (1987’s Blood Rage) and Damien Leone (Terrifier, Terrifier 2). Bethany’s work has also appeared in The Big Takeover, PRISM international, and Write magazine.
Her recently completed novel, Walk On (publisher TBD), began its development in the Alistair MacLeod Mentorship Program.
Bethany received a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre Studies from Dalhousie University before continuing her playwriting education at Tarragon Theatre in Toronto, ON.
Binnie Brennan
Email: binnie@binniebrennan.com
Binnie Brennan is the author of three books of fiction, Like Any Other Monday (Gaspereau Press), A Certain Grace and Harbour View (Quattro Books).
Co-winner of the 2009 Quattro Books’ Ken Klonsky Novella Contest, Binnie has also been published in several literary journals. Her novella, Harbour View, was published in the fall of 2009; in 2010 it was shortlisted for an Atlantic Book Award and longlisted for a ReLit Award. Her short story collection, A Certain Grace, was published in 2012. Binnie is a graduate of the Humber School for Writers, where she was mentored by M.G. Vassanji and Alistair MacLeod.
In 2007 Binnie’s story A Spider’s Tale was adapted for the stage in Halifax, where it received critical and popular acclaim. Since 1989 Binnie has enjoyed a career playing the viola with Symphony Nova Scotia. She lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Blake Maybank
Blake Maybank works as a writer, editor, naturalist, speaker, photographer, and ecotour guide. He earlier spent more than two decades with Parks Canada as a naturalist and visitor specialist, but left to pursue writing and nature full-time. In addition to writing two books, Blake wrote a nature column for the Halifax Herald for five years, and serves as editor for a variety of nature-based publications, including Nova Scotia Birds. He continues to organise and lead nature-based tours in Canada and abroad, and photographs professionally. He is an amateur musician, gardener, and wine-maker.
Blake was born in Calgary, and has lived in seven of Canada’s provinces and territories, as well as England and Barbados. He is married to Martine Dufresne, a translator and botanist from Quebec.
Blanca Baquero
Blanca Baquero’s origins are Spanish and French. Born in Chicago in 1944 and raised in New York, her family moved to Canada in 1959, making Montreal their new home.
Blanca has been writing for the past fifteen years. Her poetry has been published (in both the English and French languages) in a number of literary magazines, university works, and anthologies in Canada and in the United States. In 2001, the Canadian Authors Association chose two of her poems (Repletus and Child’s Play) to be published in their anthology. In 2001 she was the winner of the literary contest organized by the Salon du Livre de la Côte Nord in the province of Quebec.
For the past seven years the poet has been studying a Japanese form of poetry known as Haïku. In 2002, 2004, and 2005 several of her haïkus were published in Quebec by Les Éditions David of Ottawa. Additional highlights include: honourable mention in the Betty Drevniok Award 2005 organized by Haïku Canada; the publication of two of her haïku in Belgium in 2006; and third place winner in a haïku contest organized in Paris, France by l’Association française haïku.
Blanca is a member of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia, The Quebec Writers’ Federation, the League of Canadian Poets, Haïku Canada, Haïku Society of America, and the Association Française de haïku (France).
The writer moved to Nova Scotia in November 2002 and lives on the North Mountain near Canning where she is continually inspired by the pastoral beauty of the Annapolis Valley for her poetry and haïku.
Née à Chicago d’une mère québécoise et d’un père espagnol, Blanca Baquero réside au Canada depuis 1958. Poète anglophone depuis quinze ans, plusieurs de ses poèmes ont été publiés dans des revues littéraires, des anthologies, et des ouvrages universitaires.
En 1997, elle est déménagée à Sept-Iles au Québec. Déterminée à s’intégrer à la population francophone, elle s’est jointe à des ateliers d’écriture en français. Grâce à ces ateliers, elle est tombée amoureuse du haïku. En 2002, 2004 et 2005, elle été publiée par Les Éditions David d’Ottawa dans les recueils dirigé par Francine Chicoine intitulés Dire le nord, Dire la faune et Dire la flore. Haïku Canada lui a décerné une mention honorable dans le concours Betty Drevniok 2005. En 2007, elle a gagné le troisième prix du concours organisé à Paris par l’Association française de haïku.
Blanca Baquero est membre de la Nova Scotia Writers Federation, de la League of Canadian Poets, de la Quebec Writers Federation, de Haïku Canada, de la Haïku Society of America et de l’Association française de haïku en France. Elle habite en Nouvelle-Écosse depuis 2002. Écrire est pour elle un joyeux délire ainsi qu’une véritable aventure.
AWARDS
November 2007: 3rd prize at the Festival francophone de haïku, Association Française de haïku et l’Association Culturelle Franco-Japonaise de Tenri, Paris, France.
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May 2005: Honourable Mention — Haïku Canada, Betty Drevnick Award, Leaskdale, Ontario.
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October 2001: Honourable Mention — Festival international de la poésie, Trois-Rivières, Québec.
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September 2001: Honourable Mention for 2 poems — Anthology of Poetry — 2001 — Canadian Authors Association – Hampstead, Québec.
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February 2001: 1st Prize — Québec North Shore Poetry Contest organized by the Salon du livre de la Côte-Nord, Sept-Iles, Québec.
Bob Kroll
Email: rkroll@eastlink.ca
Bob Kroll has been writing professionally for more than thirty-five years. His work includes books, stage plays, radio dramas, TV documentaries, as well as historical docu-dramas for Canadian and American museums. He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Born New Haven, CT. Graduated Providence College and St. Thomas University.
Brad Kelln
Writing and reading have always been a big part of Brad Kelln’s life. From James & The Giant Peach by Roald Dahl and Pierre Berton’s The Secret World of Og as a child to ripping through Lincoln Child and Douglas Preston’s fast-paced books as an adult, he has read continuously.
Brad’s own history of writing stretches back to childhood. Initially, he wrote and illustrated his own small books then began writing short stories in junior high (eventually having one published in the school yearbook). He started his first novel-length work in high school – an action/comedy about a trio of oddballs who’ve escaped from a mental institution (possibly a foreshadow of careers to come). That book remains unfinished, unpublished, and virtually unreadable. His current writing projects are much darker than any of his previous works would have predicted.
His first book, Lost Sanity (Insomniac Press), hit bookstores in October 2001 and was picked by the Ottawa Sun as one of the best mystery/detective novels of the year. The paperback version of Lost Sanity was released Winter 2002. The sequel, Method of Madness (Insomniac Press) was released in Fall 2002 and was a roller-coaster ride of twists and turns. He has now signed on with ECW Press for the Fall 2008 release of a brand new book, In Tongues of the Dead – a religious thriller based around real-life mysteries!
In addition to being an author, Brad also has a day job. He obtained his doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the University of Calgary in 1998. He re-located to Nova Scotia to pursue his career in forensic work and began with Provincial Forensic Psychiatry Service of the Nova Scotia Hospital. He continued with the Service when it expanded to become the East Coast Forensic Hospital co-located with the Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility. Forensic management briefly considered naming the new facility THE KELLN CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE but reconsidered at the last moment.
Dr. Kelln continues to work as a clinical and forensic psychologist with the East Coast Forensic Hospital and also as a special consultant to both the Halifax Regional Police and the Nova Scotia RCMP on hostage negotiation.
Brenda MacLennan-Dunphy
Email: brenda.dunphy2017@gmail.com
Writer, director and producer, Brenda MacLennan-Dunphy has had two novels published by Pottersfield Press as well- Never Speak of This Again (2018) and The Silence of the Vessel (2020), which was nominated for an Atlantic Book Award. Four of Brenda’s plays have been on the stage at Strathspey Place, a 500 soft seat theatre in Mabou, Cape Breton- John Allan Cameron’s Last Show (November 2021), John Archie and Nellie (2016, 2012) , The Weddin’ Dance (2013), and Displacement (2014). Her play The Reiteach was put at two small stages in 2020. She was a featured writer at the 2021 Cabot Trail Writers Festival and also won the HR Bill Percy Novel Prize in 2017 for Never Speak of This Again. Born and raised in Inverness County, the mother of four is a teacher by trade, but a gypsy by nature. She loves to find characters along the way in life. Brenda lives in Skye Glen, Inverness County, with her wonderful and patient husband, Ed.
Bretton Loney
Bretton Loney is a novelist and non-fiction writer who has published two books that were nominated for Whistler Independent Book Awards: a biography, Rebel With A Cause: The Doc Nikaido Story in 2015 and in 2018 his first novel, The Last Hockey Player.
His short stories have appeared in various Canadian short story anthologies and literary journals, including the short story collection Everything Is So Political. In 2019 his story, “The Coulee Song”, appeared in The Group of Seven Reimagined, a collection of very short stories inspired by the artists’ paintings.
In 2022 Bretton independently published his second novel, Joe Howe’s Ghost. The novel tells the story of Erin Curran who is a rookie Government MLA when a startling encounter with the ghost of Joe Howe, Nova Scotia’s most famous politician and journalist, changes the trajectory of her career and her life.
Joe Howe’s Ghost is a reflection on Howe’s tumultuous political era and of provincial politics today, and an exploration of the personal struggle between the desire for political power and upholding heartfelt personal convictions that are common to both.
Bretton was an award-winning journalist for more than 20 years in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and worked in communications for the Government of Nova Scotia for 16 years. He was born and raised in Bow Island, Alberta and has undergraduate degrees from the University of Lethbridge and the University of King’s College. He lives in Halifax with his wife, Karen Shewbridge.
More information on Bretton’s writing is available at brettonloney.com
Brian Bartlett
Brian Bartlett was born in St. Stephen, New Brunswick, in 1953, grew up in Fredericton, lived for 15 years in Montreal, and moved to Halifax in 1990 to teach creative writing and literature at Saint Mary’s University. He will retire from teaching in June 2018. He has published seven collections and six chapbooks of poems, as well as Wanting the Day:Selected Poems, which was published internationally (by Peterloo Poets of Cornwall, England, and Goose Lane Editions in Canada) and won the 2004 Atlantic Poetry Prize. His other honours have inclued two Malahat Review Long Poem Prizes, first prize in the Petra Kenney poetry awards, and the 2009 Acorn-Plantos Award for People’s Poetry. In 2014 Fitzhenry & Whiteside published his first book of prose, Ringing Here & There: A Nature Calendar (a 366-paragraph book of days going from April 1st to the following March 31st), followed by Branches Over Ripples: A Waterside Journal (Gaspereau Press, 2017), a “plein air” experiment, drafted outdoors by various bodies of water (lakes, rivers, brooks, ponds, marshes, bays, waterfalls, etc.). A selection of Brian’s prose on poetry from over two decades is gathered together in All Manner of Tackle: Living with Poetry (Palimpsest, 2017).
He has also edited the Collected Poems of Alden Nowlan; a book of prose, Don McKay: Essays on His Works; selections of poetry: Earthly Pages: The Poetry of Don Domanski and, all from The Porcupine’s Quill, The Essential James Reaney, The Essential Robert Gibbs, and The Essential Dorothy Roberts; and The Child Alone, an anthology of childhood poems from which parents and other adults are largely marginalized or excluded. His wife is Karen Dahl, a Halifax Regional Library system manager, and their two children are Josh and Laura.
AWARDS
Winner of Malahat Review Long Poem Prize 1992, for “Underwater Carpentry”
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Winner of Malahat Review Long Poem Prize 1999, for “Hawthornden Improvisations”
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Winner of Petra Kenney Internatioanal Poetry Prize 2001, for “Foot-doctor for the Homeless”
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Shortlisted for Atlantic Poetry Prize 2003, for The Afterlife of Trees.
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Winner of Atlantic Poetry Prize 2004, for Wanting the Day: Selected Poems.
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Winner of Acorn-Plantos Award for Poetry’s Poetry 2008, for The Watchmaker’s Table.
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Shortlisted for J. H. Abraham Prize for Poetry 2015, for Ringing Here & There: A Nature Calendar.
Briana Corr Scott
Email: brianacorrscott@gmail.com
Briana was born in Salem Massachusetts in 1981.
She made her first picture book in 1988 for a contest, at the age of seven. Her incredible first grade teacher, Mrs. Chronholm, noticed how much she loved to draw and write and encouraged her to enter the contest. Although Briana did not win, she experienced a process that has stayed with her into adulthood.
In 2013, Briana reconnected with this childhood dream while drawing with her children at the kitchen table. She had been working as a fine artist since her graduation from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2005. As the primary care giver for her growing family, she felt an increased constraint on the time she had to make her large still life oil paintings. This frustration, combined with two bouts of postpartum depression, landed her in a deep artist’s block in 2010.
In 2013, something shifted. She drew a paper doll and cut it out for her daughter to play with. This simple activity created a joy that changed the course of her life. Briana felt a reconnection with her inner child, which ignited a new energy to create and share work that was inspired by her own childhood memories. Artful play, living close to the sea and in the woods, and re-imagining fairy tales became source material for her projects. Briana started this new path by making illustrations inspired by these childhood experiences, and vowed to follow her curiosity without question from then on. She broke her three year artist’s block when she created paper dolls as art kits, and she has been designing and selling them for a decade.
Through the years, the paper dolls turned into characters for picture books, as well as puppets for stop motion animations.
Following her curiosity without question led Briana to Sable Island, which became the subject of her first paper doll picture book published by Nimbus Publishing in 2018. Since then, Briana has relied on the ideas of play and curiosity to explore other themes, and she has created the images and words for eight books with Nimbus Publishing in a short five years.
Her stop motion animation titled “The Happy Island,” combined her words, paper doll puppets, and oil painted landscapes to tell the story of how she creates her art in her new found “happy place” and was screened at the Lunenunburg Doc Fest in 2021. Her short animation called “Little Islands,” soothed the souls of lonely children after being featured on CBC during the Covid 19 pandemic. She has retold the story of Thumbelina in her picture book “Wildflower,” illustrated mermaid babies in her board book “Mermaid Lullaby,” and reimagined the “Twelve Days of Christmas.” The repeating patterns of her paper doll’s clothing and the endpapers of her books have become a line of wallpaper. Her second picture book titled “The Book of Selkie”, was short listed for the David Booth Poetry prize for Children in 2022.
Briana has shown her work in solo and group shows in Halifax and Boston, and her illustrations have appeared internationally in online features, films and magazines. As wonderful as all this is, the best place to find her is in her happy place, wandering the shore with her paints, writing stories by the sea.
PUBLICATIONS
Written and Illustrated:
She Dreams of Sable Island, 2019, Nimbus Publishing.
The Book of Selkie, 2020, Nimbus Publishing.
Wildflower, 2021, Nimbus Publishing.
Mermaid Lullaby, 2022, Nimbus Publishing.
The Twelve Days of Christmas, 2022, Nimbus Publishing.
While you Were Sleeping, ( 2023), Nimbus Publishing.
Seaside Lullaby, (Fall 2024), Nimbus Publishing.
I Lost a Day, ( coming Spring 2025), Nimbus Publishing.
Illustrated:
The Mermaid Handbook, 2020, Nimbus Publishing.
The Pink Balloon, 2021
If You Could Do Anything , 2022, Nimbus Publishing.
Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea, (Cover) 2024
The Nymph and the Lamp (cover) 2024
AWARDSshort listed for the David Booth Poetry prize for Children in 2022.