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2025/26 Jampolis Cottage Writers in Residence

Congratulations to the recipients of the 2025/26 Sponsored Residencies at Jampolis Cottage and to the participants in the 2025 Oliver-Craig Black Writers’ Retreat at Jampolis Cottage!

Atlantic Indigenous Writer’s Residency:
Michelle Porter

Delmore “Buddy” Daye Residency:
Trevor Silver

Robert Pope Foundation Residency:
Christine Wu

Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia Residencies:
Les Tyler Johnson & Amy Saunders

Oliver-Craig Black Writers’ Retreat:
Tracey Pinder & Trevor Silver

Learn more about these writers and their residency and retreat projects below.

Michelle Porter

Recipient of the Atlantic Indigenous Writer's Residency,
sponsored by Amanda Peters (author of The Berry Pickers and Waiting for the Long Night Moon)

Michelle Porter is the descendent of a long line of Métis storytellers (the Goulet family) originally from the Red River area. Her first novel, A Grandmother Begins the Story (2023), was the winner of the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and was shortlisted for the Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. She’s the author of two nonfiction books, Approaching Fire and Scratching River, and one book of poetry, Inquiries. Currently, she lives in Newfoundland and Labrador where she teaches creative writing.

Michelle plans to focus on the development of a second book-length poetry manuscript, Yellow Pears, which explores themes related to Métis intergenerational storytelling, trauma, joy, and healing. With a selection of poems already drafted, Michelle will use the Atlantic Indigenous Writer's Residency to edit and to write new poems to complete the thematic arc of the poetry collection as currently imagined. Michelle wants to look ahead, using word, line, and stanza to explore possibilities for the future (Indigenous futurity), relationships with the land (prairie grassland and bison in particular), and what Oji-Cree writer Joshua Whitehead and Dene and Métis poet Tenille Campbell have termed "Indigenous joy." She also wants to ask what joy and the future of bison have to do with her, her ancestors, and all our collective futures. Yellow Pears will be published by McClelland & Stewart in 2027.

Trevor Silver

Recipient of the Delmore "Buddy" Daye Residency,
sponsored by the Delmore "Buddy" Daye Learning Institute

+ Participant in the Oliver-Craig Black Writers' Retreat,
sponsored by the Honourable Don Oliver and The Craig Foundation

Trevor Silver is a multidisciplinary entrepreneur, writer, and community builder from North Preston, Nova Scotia. He is the founder of tREv Clothing, a brand rooted in the values of trust, respect, education, and value. Through his storytelling, mentorship, and social impact work, Trevor empowers others to purse personal growth and creative success. His writing blends real-life experience with motivational insight, drawing from his journey as a Black business owner and youth mentor. Trevor is currently working on his debut book, Trevor’s Life Lessons, a reflection on the principles that have guided his path.

During the residency, Trevor will be focused on completing the first full draft of his debut nonfiction book, Trevor’s Life Lessons. This project combines memoir and motivational storytelling, drawing on his lived experience as a Black entrepreneur, mentor, and community leader. The book shares hard-earned lessons on discipline, resilience, self-worth, and success, all grounded in stories from Trevor’s upbringing in North Preston and the journey of building his brand, tREv Clothing. The retreat and residency weeks will provide the dedicated time and space needed to refine the book’s structure, deepen key chapters, and bring this work-in-process closer to completion.

Christine Wu

Recipient of the Robert Pope Foundation Residency,
sponsored by the Robert Pope Foundation

Christine Wu is a Chinese-Canadian poet born and raised on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh (Vancouver, BC) who now lives and writes in Kjipuktuk, Mi’kma’ki. Her work has been published in literary journals including Arc, Contemporary Verse 2, The Malahat Review, and Room, among others. In 2023, she was the winner of the RBC PEN Canada New Voices Award, and in 2022, she was a finalist for the RBC Writers’ Trust Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. Her debut poetry collection, Familial Hungers, was published by Brick Books in 2025.

Christine will be working on new poems for her sophomore collection of poetry, centered around leaving the Church and its parallels with the experience of losing her late father, with whom she had a complicated and tense relationship. This new work will explore her experiences growing up in a Christian subculture within a family rife with generational trauma—and the intersection of her relationships with faith and family, the impact of colonialism, and the ways to grieve what has been lost.

Photo credit: Indigo Clarke Media

Les Tyler Johnson

Recipient of a Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia Residency

Les Tyler Johnson is a writer, educator, and multifaceted creator whose work explores trans identity, relationships, and personal transformation. His work has appeared in The New York Times Modern Love, Tablet Magazine, and Narrative Magazine. When not writing, Les enjoys Zumba, sewing, reading, and spending time with his partner, two adult sons, and cat.

Les will be working on a graphic memoir that explores the complex—and often tumultuous—relationship with his mother, who lived with and later died from Alzheimer's. Centred on his mother's late-life relationship with another memory care home resident, Karen, and Les's own journey as a queer and trans person, the project explores vulnerability, acceptance, healing, and the transformative power of breaking free of societal expectations.

Amy Saunders

Recipient of a Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia Residency

Amy Saunders is a queer, award-winning writer of poetry, memoir, essay, and short fiction. Her work focuses on addiction, family, motherhood, spirituality, and recovery. Her personal essays, branded content, and poetry have appeared in Chatelaine, VICE, TeenVogue, SheDoesTheCity, the Canadian Archive of Poetry, and IN&OUT magazine. A Toronto-native, she now lives in the unceded and ancestral territory of Kjipuktuk with her husband and daughter. She is an alumna of Tennant’s Cove Writers Workshops (NB), Off Assignments ‘Writing Motherhood’ with Rachel Yoder (USA), and the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, where she was awarded the Banff Artist Award for artistic merit in 2024.

For the duration of her WFNS Residency, Amy will continue her work on her first manuscript, To Carry a Corpse, a nonfiction work titled in which a father-daughter duo find each other in the afterlife. Drawing on inspiration from Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice, Terese Marie Mailhot’s Heartberries, and Sheila Heti’s Pure Colour, To Carry a Corpse is a transcendent memoir of redemption and prose. Amy is currently seeking representation.

Tracey Pinder

Participant in the Oliver-Craig Black Writers' Retreat,
sponsored by the Honourable Don Oliver and The Craig Foundation

Tracey Pinder is not one for labels. A few that have followed her are facilitator, agitator, activist, feminist, mom, friend and confidante, and nomadic spirit. Tracey is drawn to various forms of creativity and has penned short stories and poetry, but it has taken her many years to call herself a writer. Born in England and spending most of her life in Ontario, Tracey came to the east coast with her laptop and camera to continue documenting this thing we call life. She enjoys both the lake and the ocean and continues to find community in her new home province.

During the Oliver-Craig Retreat, Tracey will be focusing on the research and storytelling aspects of her mother’s immigration story: life in 1950’s England as a young immigrant woman who, up until then, had had little exposure to white folks. Her mother immigrated to England from Barbados on her own at the age of 19, living in Leeds before moving to London where she met and married Tracey’s father. Growing up, Tracey repeatedly heard the story of her parents’ epic romance and courtship, the kind of heart-warming tale that movies are made of, but not much about her mother’s life in England prior to meeting her dad. Her mother's creative nonfiction story will be Tracey’s first book-length project.

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The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia is based in Kjipuktuk, in Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq People. This territory is covered by the “Treaties of Peace and Friendship,” which Mi’kmaq and Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) Peoples first signed with the British Crown in 1725. The treaties do not deal with surrender of lands and resources but in fact recognize Mi’kmaq and Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) title and establish the rules for an ongoing relationship between nations.

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Simultaneous Submissions

The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS) administers some programs (and special projects) that involve print and/or digital publication of ‘selected’ or ‘winning’ entries. In most cases, writing submitted to these programs and projects must not be previously published and must not be simultaneously under consideration for publication by another organization. Why? Because our assessment and selection processes depends on all submitted writing being available for first publication. If writing selected for publication by WFNS has already been published or is published by another organization first, copyright issues will likely make it impossible for WFNS to (re-)publish that writing.

When simultaneous submissions to a WFNS program are not permitted, it means the following:

  • You may not submit writing that has been accepted for future publication by another organization.
  • You may not submit writing that is currently being considered for publication by another organization—or for another prize that includes publication.
  • The writing submitted to WFNS may not be submitted for publication to another organization until the WFNS program results are communicated. Results will be communicated directly to you by email and often also through the public announcement of a shortlist or list of winners. Once your writing is no longer being considered for the WFNS program, you are free to submit it elsewhere.
    • If you wish to submit your entry elsewhere before WFNS program results have been announced, you must first contact WFNS to withdraw your entry. Any entry fee cannot be refunded.

Prohibitions on simultaneous submission do not apply to multiple WFNS programs. You are always permitted to submit the same unpublished writing to multiple WFNS programs (and special projects) at the same time, such as the Alistair MacLeod Mentorship Program, the Emerging Writers Prizes, the Jampolis Cottage Residency Program, the Message on a Bottle contest, the Nova Writes Competition, and any WFNS projects involving one-time or recurring special publications.

Recommended Experience Levels

The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS) recommends that participants in any given workshop 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. The “Recommended experience level” section of each workshop description refers to the following definitions used by WFNS.

  • 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, and writing for children and young adults) 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.

For “intensive” and “masterclass” creative writing 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