Fiction (adult)

Deborah Stiles

Deborah Stiles was born and raised in Appalachia, in West Virginia, but found herself moving northward in 1988. A graduate of the University of Maine’s M.A. in Creative Writing in 1990 with the thesis No Curtains on These Windows (a collection of short stories), she has published poems, short stories, agriculture and cooking articles, and scholarly articles in a wide variety of journals in Canada and the U.S.

In 2002, BrickHouse Books (Baltimore, Maryland), published her book-length poem, Movement Catalogued; in 1991, Northern LightsPress (Orono, Maine) published her poetry collection, Riding Limestone. She has completed two additional poetry manuscripts, whose poems have appeared in The Fiddlehead, The Carleton Arts Review, To, Kennebec, Zymergy, Nashwaak Review, Pottersfield Portfolio, and elsewhere. In 1997, after living in Fredericton, NB for three years, she applied for landed immigrant status and also completed her Ph.D. (University of Maine, History) with a doctoral thesis on the Fredericton-based-but rurally-oriented poet and newspaper editor, Martin Butler (1857-1915). Currently, she is working on several projects, including a novel and also the revision of her thesis on Martin Butler. In January 2004, she became a Canadian citizen.

An Associate Professor in Humanities at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College, and a part-time farmer, Stiles enjoys teaching history, writing and literature courses and sharing her love of the natural world, agriculture, and rural society that is an integral part of her creative work.

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Jon Tattrie

Jon Tattrie is the editor of Atlantic Books Today and a freelance journalist with CBC and other media outlets. He’s the author of two novels and six nonfiction books, including Peace by Chocolate and The Hermit of Africville.

He holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Kings College and has taught writing and journalism at Kings and at Dalhousie University. He now helps people write their own books through Write Now! with Jon Tattrie at jontattrie.ca

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Ryan Turner

Ryan Turner’s short stories have been published in magazines such as the The New Quarterly, The Puritan, and Prairie Fire. His latest book, Half-Sisters & Other Stories, was shortlisted for the 2020 ReLit Award, and he has a story in Best Canadian Short Stories 2024, which will be published by Biblioasis in November. He is the co-founder and co-director of the AfterWords Literary Festival in Halifax.

Half-Sisters is comprised of “lovely, humane, gentle stories…very perceptive.” — Claire Armitstead, The Guardian Books Podcast

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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.

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Carol Sinclair

Carol is writing a book entitled, The Darling Cannibals. She’s also an editor with Editors’ Association of Canada. Her forte is dialogue and character dynamic. She has been an actor and playwright in eight provinces for 35 years.

Recent projects are: The Last Bean Supper, about the loss of women volunteers with the closing of our churches, Far Flung, about immigrants setting up in rural Canada, and Vis Viva, about the women in early science. She was invited as Atlantic rep of the Canadian delegation to an international gathering of female playwrights in Mumbai, India, for her hard-hitting drama, Come Unto Me, about a social worker who turns vigilante when a kiddie porn pervert is publically named and then sent home to await trial.

Carol has combined writing and performance for TV as an issue satirist on Rita Deverell’s Skylight Series for Vision TV. Three early years at Second City forged her conviction that humour propels message. Screenplays of her all-female cast comedy Idyll Gossip and the highly romantic comedy, The Summer of the Handley-Page have been funded by Ontario Film Development and Telefilm. The latter script was also produced for national radio by CBC, as was her one-woman tour de force, Brownie from Hell. She has been, for fourteen years, director of Sinc Ink. She is currently fund-raising to produce her adaptation of ScotiaGiller prize-winner Linden MacInyre’s novel, Causeway.

Ship’s Company Theatre premiered her play, Ferry Tales, her play, Share, and her large-cast comedy, The Summer of the Handley-Page. Another huge-cast piece, Firefly, was staged at Dal Theatre as well as the Blyth Festival.

She has been writer in residence at St. FX, and with Dalhousie’s Medical Humanities, where she wrote Défense de Fumer, which toured Nova Scotia, Ottawa, Vancouver, Charlottetown, Saint John, and Arviat, Rankin Inlet and Iqaluit, Nunavut.

A multiple recipient of awards from Canada Council’s Writing and Theatre Sections, and the Provincial Councils of Ontario and NS, and the Municipality of the District of Guysborough, her other professionally produced plays include Young Hate (GG nominated) Brownie From Hell (Crow’s Theatre, Toronto), Firefly (Blyth Festival, Blyth, ON) Idyll Gossip, Presents and Old Boots (Mulgrave Road Theatre, NS), Hansel & Gretel & Handsome & Grateful (Festival Antigonish).

Professional productions have been as far-reaching as Toscana, Italy; Galway, Ireland; Perth, Australia; Cape Town, South Africa; London, England; Belgrade in the former Yugoslavia; and in Cincinnati, US, as well as in every province in Canada and Nunavut. Carol is a member of WIF-T Atlantic, the Editors’ Association of Canada, Canadian Actors’ Equity Association and ACTRA.

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J. P. Smith

Despite school years in Halifax (Dalhousie ’63) and working years in Montreal (Dawson College) Ray Smith has always considered Mabou, Cape Breton, home. Retired from teaching in 2007, he now lives in Mabou in the house built by his grandfather – who also built as his store the building which is now The Red Shoe Pub. He has two exemplary sons, Nicholas and Alexander.

“A brilliant stylist” (Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature), he nonetheless has no Smith style: each of his seven books is unique. Somewhat over half the work is comic, often hilariously so. Although usually set in Canada with Canadian characters, the books reflect his extensive travel and international perspective. Important sections of his work are set in Iceland, Venice, Edinburgh, Paris, Zurich, and Germany, and other languages appear often. A dramatic performer, Smith has done over 250 readings of his work in North America and in a dozen European countries. Many of the stories and chapters have been published separately in journals and anthologies. Smith has also published criticism, reviews, travel pieces, etc, in newspapers, magazines, journals, and on radio in Canada and Europe. He was writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta (1986-87) and Canada-Scotland Writing Fellow in Edinburgh (1987-88). A Night at the Opera won the Hugh MacLennan Best Fiction Award in 1992. Charles Foran recently sent Century to the prime minister as number 78 on Yann Martel’s project, What is Stephen Harper Reading?

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Magi Nams

Magi Nams is an award-winning nature writer, aspiring novelist, and author and indie publisher of the travel memoir trilogy Cry of the Kiwi: A Family’s New Zealand Adventure. She holds a B.Sc. in zoology and an M.Sc. in plant ecology and has published scientific papers, written wildlife-related material for government agencies and conservation organizations, and published dozens of magazine articles in the children’s nature magazine Ranger Rick. She has also published poetry and has broadcast personal essays on CBC Radio.

Magi is a keen gardener, birder, hiker, traveller, and piano student. Check out her books and latest travel and outdoor adventures at maginams.ca. Magi lives in a 177-year-old farmhouse near Tatamagouche with her wildlife biologist husband.

Books: Cry of the Kiwi trilogy: Once a Land of Birds, This Dark Sheltering Forest, Tang of the Tasman Sea

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Anna Quon

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.

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Sherry D. Ramsey

Sherry D. Ramsey writes science fiction and fantasy for both adults and young adults, and is one of the founding editors of Cape Breton’s Third Person Press. She has published over thirty short stories nationally and internationally, and her award-winning debut novel, One’s Aspect to the Sun, launched in 2013 from Edmonton’s Tyche Books. The sequels, Dark Beneath the Moon and Beyond the Sentinel Stars (Tyche Books) followed in 2015 and 2017, and the fourth book in the Nearspace series, A Veiled and Distant Sky, released in March of 2022. She has also published the YA fantasy The Seventh Crow (Dreaming Robot Press, 2015), and the middle grade science fiction adventure, Planet Fleep (2018). Some of her short stories are collected in To Unimagined Shores (2011) and The Cache and Other Stories (2017). A collection of stories for young readers, Beacon and Other Stories, came out in 2019. She’s currently adding more titles to her urban fantasy Olympia Investigations series and working on a comic fantasy novel, as well as teaching English courses as a sessional instructor at Cape Breton University.

Sherry has co-edited six anthologies of regional short fiction with Third Person Press and conducted numerous writing workshops in person and online. A member of the Writer’s Federation of Nova Scotia Writer’s Council, Sherry is also a past Vice-President, Secretary-Treasurer, and Web Administrator of SF Canada. She is an active participant with Writers In The Schools and loves talking to students about writing and creativity. You can visit Sherry online, read her blog, follow her on Twitter and Instagram @sdramsey, and find some free fiction and sample chapters on her website.

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Darcy Rhyno

Darcy Rhyno writes novels, short stories, plays, non-fiction (travel, science, health, people profiles). His latest book is a memoir about life in post-communist Eastern Europe.

He is the author of the pre-teen fantasy novel set in 1950’s Halifax called THE UNDERWORLD MAGICIAN. He’s also the author of the YA novel MONSTERS OF SUBURBIA, which is a realism adventure story with themes of bullying, isolation, estrangement and myth. This novel is suitable for junior high readers. He has also published two collections of short stories, CONDUCTOR OF WAVES and HOLIDAYS. He’s been writing for Saltscapes magazine since 2007. He is an award-winning travel writer and a member of the Travel Media Association of Canada and has published hundreds of articles with Saltscapes, Canadian Geographic Travel, BBC Travel, Atlas Obscura, The Daily Beast, the Chronicle Herald and many, many more. His play Snowbirds, a comedy set at Christmas, has been produced twice in Nova Scotia.

Conductor of Waves is a collection of 12 stories set in a fictional Nova Scotia fishing community. The Globe and Mail called it “a strikingly accomplished collection.” His first novel for children placed second in the Atlantic Writing Competition. As a columnist for Saltscapes magazine, Darcy writes the back page for each issue, prepares feature articles and writes for special publications about travel, food and other topics. He writes for other magazines and newspapers as well. One of the stories in his collection called Holidays was published in The Vagrant Revue of New Fiction, an anthology of work by the most promising writers in Atlantic Canada.

For much of his career, Darcy has worked in education and with children. A teacher and arts worker by profession, he has worked with many schools and teachers across the province, as well as with artists from all genres. For 16 years, he was an instructor in the graduate program of the Faculty of Education at Mount St. Vincent University where he taught courses in popular culture, reading, media and literature. His readings and workshops are always engaging, informative and entertaining. See his website at www.darcyrhyno.com

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