Unbound audiobook series
Unbound was an audiobook series featuring fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by Nova Scotian authors. A co-production of the Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS) and Neptune Theatre, the series breathed new life into the works of foundational and exceptional authors, giving Nova Scotians (and the world) an opportunity to experience and explore these works in a new format. Each Unbound audiobook was performed by a local actor or writer and recorded at Neptune Theatre in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 2021 or 2022. The audiobooks were available for sale from WFNS from late 2021 through early 2025.
Ocean
(1 hour, 41 minutes / 2022 / Poetry)
Written by Sue Goyette
Performed by Leah Pritchard
The ocean has never had a biographer quite like Sue Goyette. Living in Halifax, Goyette’s days are bounded by the substantial fact of the North Atlantic, both by its physical presence and by its metaphoric connotations. And like many of life’s overwhelming facts, our awareness of the ocean’s importance and impact waxes and wanes as the ocean sometimes lurks in the background, sometimes imposes itself upon us, yet always, steadily, is. Goyette plunges in and swims well outside the buoys to craft a sort of alternate, apocryphal account of our relationship with the ocean. In these linked poems, Goyette’s offbeat cast of archetypes (fog merchants, lifeguards, poets, carpenters, mothers, daughters) pronounce absurd explanations to both common and uncommon occurrences in a tone that is part cautionary tale, part creation myth and part urban legend.
Ocean won of the 2015 Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia’s Masterworks Art Award and was a finalist for the 2014 Griffin Poetry Prize. The French translation of Ocean by Georgette LeBlanc won the 2020 Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation.
Ocean is also available in paperback from Gaspereau Press.
Scotch River
(12 hours, 41 minutes / 2022 / Fiction)
Written by Linda Little
Performed by Matthew Lumley
Scotch River (2006) is a novel of powerful secrets. It tells the story of Cass Hutt, a bull rider living out West, who has nothing left to lose. With nothing and no one to hold him—his rodeo partner has been killed—Cass heads East, lured by the arrival of a mysterious land deed for property in Scotch River, Nova Scotia. Back in his boyhood hometown, Cass encounters people as eccentric and as lonely as himself. They may even be related to him.
Scotch River won the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction in 2007. Published in print by Penguin Random House Canada, the novel is now out of print.
Song of Rita Joe: Autobiography of a Mi'kmaw Poet
(5 hours, 54 minutes / 2022 / Poetry & nonfiction)
Written by Rita Joe
Performed by Catherine Anne Martin
This honoured elder has left us her own story, a book of exceptional courage and insight. Born in poverty on a Cape Breton reserve, Rita Joe was a gentle woman who fought for family, justice, and her own independent voice. She faced intolerance, ignorance and abuse—searched her culture for strength—and wrote poems of clarity and encouragement that continue to inspire. Song of Rita Joe includes 75 of her poems. A winner of the Order of Canada, Rita Joe writes about her life’s journey, and the promise of hope and healing.
Song of Rita Joe is also available in paperback from Cape Breton Books.
Lagomorph
(46 minutes / 2021 / Fiction)
Written and performed by Alexander MacLeod
A short story told from the perspective of a father who brings home a rabbit for a family pet, "Lagomorph" explores the significance this critter takes on for the narrator as the family’s dynamic shifts and fractures.
Originally published in the literary magazine Granta, "Lagomorph" was one of the winners of the 100th O. Henry Prize in 2019. The special edition book Lagomorph (2020), designed and printed by Andrew Steeves of Gaspereau Press, won the 2021 Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia Masterworks Arts Award, whose jury praised the story for "stay[ing] with you long after you put it down." Gaspereau Press's special edition is out of print.
The Door of My Heart and Other Poems
(36 minutes / 2021 / Poetry)
Written by Maxine Tynes
Performed by Tara Taylor
Curated by Evelyn C. White
Curated by poet and scholar Evelyn C. White, this audio anthology gathers the best poems from the collected works of Maxine Tynes: her debut, Borrowed Beauty (1987), winner of the Milton Acorn People’s Poetry Award; her follow-ups, Woman Talking Woman (1990) and The Door Of My Heart (1993); and her collection of children's poetry, Save the World For Me (1991).
Maxine Tynes was a highly celebrated poet, a recipient of the Governor General's Canada Medal for her teaching, and a champion in the search for Black Nova Scotian identity and community.
Several Maxine Tynes titles from Pottersfield Press are available in paperback from Pottersfield's distributor, Nimbus Publishing.
The Leaving
(5 hours, 52 minutes / 2021 / Fiction)
Written by Budge Wilson
Performed by Margaret Muriel Legere
In the eleven short stories comprising The Leaving (1990), Budge Wilson, the popular author of Lorinda's Diary and Thirteen Never Changes, explores growing up in a colourful but imperfect world from women's points of view. A pen pal halfway around the world, starting a diary, a favourite teacher's romance with metaphors, the intricacies of family relationships, a high school reunion, the bittersweet taste of first love — all are fodder for stories that will be read over and over again, and to treasure for a lifetime.
The Leaving is available in paperback from Fitzhenry & Whiteside.
We Keep a Light
(9 hours, 5 minutes / 2021 / Nonfiction)
Written by Evelyn M. Richardson
Performed by Martha Irving
On an isolated lighthouse station off the southern tip of Nova Scotia, the Richardsons shared the responsibilities and pleasures of island living, from carrying water and collecting firewood to making preserves and studying at home. The close-knit family didn’t mind their isolation, and found delight in the variety and beauty of island life We Keep a Light (1945) is much more than a memoir. It is an exquisitely written, engrossing record of family life set against a glowing lighthouse, the enduring shores of Nova Scotia, and the ever-changing sea.
We Keep a Light is available in paperback from Nimbus Publishing.
Investors & Partners
The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia acknowledges the Nova Scotia Creative Industries Fund for the Arts for its investment in the Unbound audiobook series and Neptune Theatre for its partnership in realizing this project.
The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia is also grateful to Cape Breton Books, Fitzhenry and Whiteside Limited, Gaspereau Press, Nimbus Publishing, Penguin Random House Canada, and Pottersfield Press for their permission to produce and distribute Unbound audiobook titles.
