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Ellemeno Visual Literature Prize

Established in 2023, the Ellemeno Visual Literature Prize ran until 2026, its third and final year. It was developed in recognition of textile artist Marilyn Smulders, who made significant contributions to Nova Scotia’s literary landscape during her tenure as Executive Director of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS) from 2017 to 2023. The prize was named for Marilyn’s screenprinting and quilting moniker, Ellemeno.

The Ellemeno Prize celebrated creative cross-pollination between the literary arts and the visual arts, accepting literary submissions that responded to visual artwork as well as visual submissions that responded to literary works. Each year, a volunteer selection committee chose one winning writer or artist, who received a cash prize ($250), digital publication of their winning artwork, and a featured interview on the WFNS website.

Gabriel Milhet

2026 Ellemeno Visual Literature Prize

Read "Researching the Life of Gabriel Hall (to 1824): Farmer, Freedom Fighter, and a Black Refugee of The War of 1812" & our interview with Gabriel Milhet

Gabriel Milhet is an African Nova Scotian writer. He is a winner of the 2025 Varma Prizes in Gothic Literature. His research appears in Intersections and Canada’s History and is forthcoming in The Canadian Encyclopedia and Findings / Trouvailles. His poetry is forthcoming in The White Wall Review and The South Shore Review.

2026 finalists:

  • Shelagh Howard for the long-exposure photo series The Secret Keepers, which responds to the poetry anthology Resistance: Righteous Rage in the Age of #Metoo (University of Regina Press, 2021), edited by Sue Goyette.
  • Basma Kavanagh for the textile work Untitled (Tidelines embroidery), which responds to an unpublished short poem by fellow Nova Scotian poet Sean Howard.
  • Rebecca Wilson for the watercolour painting Desire Paths, which responds to Robert McFarlane’s The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot (Penguin Books, 2012).

Sonja Boon

2025 Ellemeno Visual Literature Prize

See At Sea (Casket Cloth and Mourning Shawl) & read our interview with Sonja Boon

Sonja Boon is a mixed race writer, researcher, flutist, and teacher based in Kjipuktuk. Her memoir, What the Oceans Remember: Searching for Belonging and Home, appeared in 2019, and she has published nonfiction, poetry, and fiction in a range of journals, including Riddle Fence, Room, Geist, Pinhole Poetry, and Unlost as well as in anthologies. She is passionate about life stories and the myriad ways these stories emerge: from traditional diaries, letters, and memoirs to archival ephemera. Her work attends to the relationship between text and textiles and to the ways that women’s lives have historically been stitched rather than written.

2025 finalists:

  • Doretta Groenendyk for the painting We Just Swim, which responds to Bonnie Tsui’s Why We Swim (Algoquin Books, 2021) and a musing by surfer and activist Dave Rastovich: “We forget our bodies as we know them and we just… swim.”
  • Jamie Samson for the poetic sequence Still, Life., which responds to three paintings—each, in Jamie’s words, “reflecting on a particular part of the working person’s day”: John Brack’s The Breakfast Table (1958); Salvador Dali’s Living Still Life (1956); Antoine Vollon’s Mound of Butter (1875-85).

Shannon Webb-Campbell

2024 Ellemeno Visual Literature Prize

Read "Her Eros Restored" & our interview with Shannon Webb-Campbell

Shannon Webb-Campbell is of Mi’kmaq and settler heritage. She is a member of Flat Bay First Nation. Her books include Re: Wild Her (Book*hug, forthcoming 2025), Lunar Tides (2022), I Am a Body of Land (2019), and Still No Word (2015), which was the recipient of Egale Canada’s Out in Print Award. Shannon is a PhD candidate at the University of New Brunswick and the editor of Visual Arts News Magazine.

2024 finalists:

  • Hilary Briar for The Garden of Love (multiflora rose thorns and wood glue), which translates the final line of William Blake’s poem “The Garden of Love” (1794) — that is, “…binding with briars my joys and desires….” — into binary code, representing each ‘0’ or ‘1’ with a locally foraged rose thorn curving either downward (for ‘0’) or upward (for ‘1’).
  • Darryl Whetter for “When Silence Isn’t So Accurate” (nonfiction), which responds to the architectural work Rothko Chapel (1971), designed by Philip Johnson, Howard Barnstone, and Eugene Aubry and housing site-specific paintings by Mark Rothko. The essay weaves memoir and art history into a reflection on love.
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Experience Levels

The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS) uses the following terms to describe writers’ experience levels:

  • New writers: those with less than two years’ creative writing experience and/or no short-form publications (e.g., short stories, personal essays, or poems in literary magazines, journals, anthologies, or chapbooks).
  • Emerging writers: those with more than two years’ creative writing experience and/or numerous short-form publications.
  • Early-career authors: those with 1 or 2 book-length publications or the equivalent in book-length and short-form publications.
  • Established authors: those with 3 or 4 book-length publications.
  • Professional authors: those with 5 or more book-length publications.

Please keep in mind that each form of creative writing (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, writing for children, writing for young adults, and others) provides you with a unique set of experiences and skills, so you might consider yourself an ‘established author’ in one form but a ‘new writer’ in another.

Occasionally, WFNS uses the phrase “emerging and established writers/authors” to mean ‘writers and authors of all experience levels.’

The “Recommended experience level” section of each workshop description refers to the above definitions. A workshop’s participants should usually have similar levels of creative writing and / or publication experience. This ensures that each participant gets value from the workshop⁠ and is presented with info, strategies, and skills that suit their experience. 

For “intensive” and “masterclass” workshops, which provide more opportunities for peer-to-peer feedback, the recommended experience level should be followed closely.

For all other workshops, the recommended experience level is just that—a recommendation—and we encourage potential participants to follow their own judgment when registering.

If uncertain about your experience level with respect to any particular workshop, please feel free to contact us at communications@writers.ns.ca