Coffee Chats
Launched in 2020, the Coffee Chats program enables WFNS members at all career stages to seek advice and inspiration from professional authors.
For questions about this program, contact program lead Linda Hudson at wits@writers.ns.ca
Coffee Chats provide writers with affordable, subsidized access to the advice of professional authors on a wide range of topics related to the writing life, such as overcoming creative blocks and challenges, establishing healthy writing practices, and planning for publication opportunities. The aim of the program is to help newer writers solve creative problems, to point them toward strategies for professional growth, and to educate them about the literary landscape.
Each Coffee Chat is an informal, half-hour advisory session with a participating member of the WFNS Writers’ Council. It allows a more established author to share their experiences and opinions with a newer writer, who can draw on and benefit from these experiences to better plan their writing practice and to overcome issues they might be struggling with in their current writing. The conversation will be most successful if both participants bring their best selves, establish a safe and inclusive space for discussion, and focus on inspiration and creativity.
The program fee for advice-seeking writers is $40; advisors are compensated $65 for the 30-minute conversation, with the difference subsidized by WFNS.
Once a Coffee Chat scheduling request & fee have been received, WFNS confirms an advisor’s availability; arranges a mutually convenient date and time; schedules a meeting via phone or Zoom; and then confers payment to the advisor.
- Coffee Chats are conducted only by phone or by the free-to-use Zoom video conferencing platform; they are not conducted in person. This eliminates travel time and expense for advisors and those seeking advice.
- Advisors are not expected to provide advice, answer questions, or review writing before or after a Coffee Chat. This ensures advisors are free from intended or unintended pressure to perform uncompensated labour.
- Advice-seeking writers may not directly contact advisors before or after a Coffee Chat. This ensures advisors spend minimal time responding to scheduling requests. Repeatedly or unwantedly contacting an advisor (or potential advisors) may result in cancellation of any scheduled Coffee Chat and/or in loss of access to the Coffee Chats program.
- WFNS may decline any Coffee Chat that is requested for a purpose outside the aim of the program, which is to help newer writers solve creative problems, to point them toward strategies for professional growth, and to educate them about the literary landscape. This limitation ensures best use of the funds available to subsidize Coffee Chats. Purposes outside the scope of Coffee Chats include compensating an advisor retroactively (i.e., for advice already given); obtaining detailed feedback on written material (see instead our Manuscript Review Program); conducting a medium- or long-term mentorship (see instead our MacLeod Mentorship Program); interviewing potential literary service providers (such as contract editors or publicists); and pitching manuscripts to potential publishers. If your request is declined, your scheduling fee will be refunded.
Make note of three potential advisors from the profiles below. If searching for advisors with experience in a particular genre of writing, you may type the genre into the search bar.
A.J.B. (John or Jay) Johnston
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.
A.J.B. (John or Jay) Johnston
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.
Adam Foulds
Alice Burdick
Alice Burdick lives and writes poetry in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. 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. She is a poet, essayist, and cookbook author who also edits, proofreads, does manuscript evaluations, and leads workshops for adults and children.
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 VerseFest Ottawa, Ottawa International Writers Festival, The Scream in High Park in Toronto, and the Halifax Word on the Street. She co-owned the former Lexicon Books in Lunenburg from 2014 to 2020, where she organized and promoted readings and events, including Lexicon Salons, where poets and musicians collaborated.
Her sixth book of poetry, ”Ox Lost, Snow Deep” was released in Fall 2024 from Anvil Press/a feed dog books.
”Deportment”, a book of selected poems from the early 1990s onward, was released by Wilfrid Laurier University Press in the autumn of 2018. Book of Short Sentences came out in the spring of 2016 from Mansfield Press following Holler, 2012, and Flutter,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.
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.
Alice Burdick
Coffee Chat scheduling requests are accepted only through the form at the bottom of this page. Please note that completing the request form is the final step in our recommended scheduling request checklist:
☐ Ensure your eligibility. To request a Coffee Chat, you must be a current General Member of WFNS. General Membership is open to anyone who writes.
☐ Select three potential advisors.
☐ Pay the $40 scheduling fee. This fee covers administration of the scheduling request and the Coffee Chat itself. If we are unable to schedule a Coffee Chat for you, the fee will be refunded in full.
To pay fee by phone, call us between 9am and 4pm on weekdays at 902 423 8116 with your credit card details.
To pay fee by mail, send a cheque (payable to “Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia”) post-dated for no later than the request submission.
☐ Complete and submit the form at the bottom of this page. After clicking the “Submit scheduling request” button, please wait until the green confirmation message appears (confirming that your form has been successfully submitted) before exiting this page.
REQUESTS ACCEPTED YEAR-ROUND
Scheduling request form
This form includes all information required for expedient requests of potential Coffee Chats advisors. As such, we do not consider any Coffee Chats advisory requests not submitted through this form. If the form itself is a barrier, please call us (902 423 8116) so that we may complete it on your behalf.
