Fiction (adult)

Joanne Jefferson

Joanne Jefferson has been passionately involved in the Nova Scotia writing community ever since she helped create Quod Libet, the QEH arts and literary magazine in 1981. She was a contributing editor with the Halifax-based newspaper, Pandora; a founding member of the Oxford Street Writers Group; and she helped establish Community of Writers, a Tatamagouche Centre program. Joanne has also been a teacher at Write Here, Write Now, the Centre’s March Break program for young writers. She facilitates hands-on writing, performance, and zine-making workshops for creators of all ages.

Joanne’s first novel, Lightning and Blackberries, was released by Nimbus Publishing in April 2008. Her short fiction, poetry, and personal essays have been published in various anthologies, including The Vagrant Revue of New Fiction, and her non-fiction work has appeared in Saltscapes, The Chronicle Herald, and The Globe and Mail. She also works as a freelance editor.

Born and raised in Halifax, Joanne now makes her home in West LaHave, Lunenburg County. She received a BA from Acadia and an MA from Dalhousie. er other passions include music, visual art, history, and baseball.

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K.V. Johansen

Originally from Kingston, Ont., K.V. Johansen studied English and History at Mount Allison, received a Master’s in Medieval Studies from the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto, and another Master’s in English, from McMaster. She writes mostly epic fantasy, as well as fantasy and science fiction for young readers; she has also written short stories and literary criticism for adults. Ancient and Medieval history and languages are one of her main interests. Johansen taught workshops at the spring 2010 MASC Young Authors and Illustrators Conference in Ottawa. She has worked with the elementary or elementary/intermediate sessions of Writers in Electronic Residence (WIER) over a number of terms and has visited schools from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario, to Austria and Macedonia. She has in the past written a large number of articles for the Nova Scotia based farm magazines Rural Delivery and Atlantic Beef Quarterly, as well as other non-fiction. She was the editor of Stalin Versus Me, the final volume of the late Donald Jack’s triple Leacock-Award-winning Bandy Papers series (Sybertooth 2005). Johansen currently lives in Sackville, NB.

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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.

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Susan Kerslake

Born in Chicago in 1943, Susan immigrated to Canada in 1966 and now lives in Halifax.

She has worked in a bookstore, the Killam Library at Dalhousie University, as a child care worker at St Joseph’s Children’s Centre, and in Child Life at the I.W.K. Grace Hospital for Children. She has worked as a volunteer with children with cystic fibrosis for over 20 years.

“Seasoning Fever is Little House on the Prairie had it been written by Annie Proulx, Wallace Stegner or Cormac McCarthy. In limpid, dreamlike prose, Susan Kerslake serves up an epic myth of the West with perceptiveness both wise and innocent. All of life’s elemental zest is here: deprivation and survival, love and lust, the magical and the mundane and the sometimes unbridgeable distance between male and female. No simple tale of prairie homesteading, this long-awaited novel imposes the ingenuous resource of a soaring poetic mind upon the grass ocean of an inscrutable land. If the measure of such fusion is an assessment of spirit, then the spirit of Seasoning Fever is original and triumphant.” – Richard Cumyn

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Stephen Kimber

STEPHEN KIMBER is an award-winning writer, editor and broadcaster. He is the author of 13 books, including two novels and nine works of nonfiction:

Bitcoin Widow: Love, Betrayal and the Missing Millions (HarperCollins, 2022) (with Jennifer Robertson);
Alexa! Changing the Face of Canadian Politics (Goose Lane 2021);
The Sweetness in the Lime: A Novel (Vagrant 2020);
What Lies Across the Water: The Real Story of the Cuban Five (Fernwood 2013);
Halifax: Warden of the North, 2nd Edition (Nimbus 2010) (with Thomas Raddall);
IWK: A Century of Caring (Nimbus 2009);
Loyalists and Layabouts: The Rapid Rise and Faster Fall of Shelburne, Nova Scotia, 1783-1792 (Doubleday 2008);
Reparations: A Novel (HarperCollins, 2006);
Sailors, Slackers and Blind Pigs: Halifax at War (Doubleday 2002);
NOT GUILTY: The Trial of Gerald Regan (Stoddart 1999);
Flight 111: The Tragedy of the Swissair Crash (Doubleday 1999; updated 2nd edition, Nimbus, 2013);
More Than Just Folks (Pottersfield 1996);
The Spirit of Africville (Formac 1992) (Co-author);
and Net Profits (Nimbus 1990).

His What Lies Across the Water: The Real Story of the Cuban Five, is a narrative nonfiction account of Cuban intelligence agents arrested in Florida in 1998 and sentenced to long terms in prison in the United States. Following its publication, Kimber toured extensively in the United States and Canada to discuss the book and the case, including meeting with members of the U.S. Congress and officials at the State Department. On December 17, 2014, the three members of the Cuban Five still in prison were released as part of an historic rapprochement between the U.S. and Cuba. Cuban officials have said Kimber’s book played a significant role in winning freedom for the Five.

Kimber’s journalism has appeared in almost all major Canadian publications including Canadian Geographic, Financial Post Magazine, Report on Business Magazine, The Literary Review of Canada, Maclean’s, Canadian Business, En Route, Chatelaine, Financial Times, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and National Post, as well as internationally in the Washington Post, Counterpunch, Progreso Weekly and the Huffington Post. For 16 years, he was a political and general interest columnist for the Daily News in Halifax.

He is currently a weekly columnist for The Halifax Examiner and a Contributing Editor for Atlantic Business Magazine.

As a broadcaster, he has been an Ottawa-based current affairs producer for the CTV Television Network and a producer, writer, story editor and host for numerous CBC television and radio programs. His work has appeared on national programs ranging from television’s Rough Cuts to radio’s Sunday Morning.

He has also produced a number of commissioned works, including Net Profits; The Report of the Royal Commission on the Donald Marshall, Jr. Prosecution; IWK: A Century of Caring; and 150 Years in the History of a Law Firm (McInnes Cooper). Awards:

What Lies was long-listed for a Libris Award for the Best Nonfiction Book published in Canada in 2013 and won the Evelyn Richardson Award for Nonfiction at the 2014 East Coast Literary Awards. In 2016, the Spanish translation of the book won the Readers’ Choice Award from the Cuban Institute of the Book as one of that year’s 10 best-selling books in Cuba. The book has also been translated into German and Serbian editions.

Sailors, Slackers, and Blind Pigs, a look at life in Halifax during World War II, won the Evelyn Richardson Nonfiction Prize, the Dartmouth Book Award for Nonfiction and a Torgi Award, and was a finalist for the Atlantic Booksellers’ Choice Award.

Loyalists and Layabouts was short-listed for both the 2009 Dartmouth Book Award for Nonfiction and the Edith Richardson Nonfiction Prize. His novel Reparations was short-listed for the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction and the Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel.

He has also won:

a Dan McArthur Award for excellence in radio documentary production,
a regional ACTRA award for documentary writing,
a Canadian Food Writers’ Award for the best magazine article on the Canadian Food Industry,
a National Author’s Award for Best Business Magazine article,
an Honourable Mention from the Centre for Investigative Reporting for investigative reporting,
more than two dozen Gold and Silver awards from the Atlantic Journalism Awards for writing,
a Silver Medal for Commentary and was a finalist on several occasions for National Magazine Awards in a variety of categories, including Best Overall Article, Column, and Religious Journalism,
and a 2002 Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal for his contribution to public life.

Since 1983, he has taught journalism at the University of King’s College, where he specializes in creative nonfiction, and co-founded the university’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction program in 2013. From 1996 to 2003, in 2007-08 and again in 2013-14, he served as Director of the School of Journalism.

In 1998-99, he was selected as a Research Fellow with the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, Florida.

In 2001, he completed a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction degree at Goucher College in Baltimore, MD.

He and his wife, former film and television costume designer and wardrobe consultant Jeanie Kimber, live in Halifax. They have three grown children.

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Jane Finlay-Young

Jane Finlay-Young was born in England’s Lake District and emigrated to Canada when she was six. Since that time she has lived in the bush in Manitoba, by the ocean on Cape Breton Island, and in various places in Ontario, including Toronto. She moved to Halifax in the Fall of 2006 and hopes to stay a good long time. Born into a family of atheists, scientists and artists she converted to Orthodox Judaism for a while and spent a fascinating, tumultuous year in Israel in the late seventies. She has since returned to her atheist roots. She has been writing since the age of nine (secretly in closets) but didn’t take herself seriously until the mid-nineties when she began her daily (except when life gets in the way!) commitment to writing.

Jane has taught writing (developing a writing workshop, The Mini Writing Career, with her friend and colleague, Annie Jacobsen, now deceased) and has edited the work of others.

In 2000 she published her first novel, From Bruised Fell (Penguin), and before that various short stories. From Bruised Fell has been optioned by the film production company Sienna (New Waterford Girl, Touch of Pink, Marion Bridge). Jane’s non-fiction piece, Ten Million Atoms Fit on the Head of a Pin, was published in the anthology First Man in My Life: Daughters Write About Their Fathers. (Penguin, Canada 2007).

Jane has co-authored a novel, Watermelon Syrup, with Annie Jacobsen. A novelist and a poet, Annie died in May 2005. She finished the third draft of her novel two weeks before she died and asked Jane to act on her behalf should it be accepted for publication. Watermelon Syrup was published in August of 2007.

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Trudy Fong

Trudy left her native Nova Scotia home for a three year round-the-world journey, writing travel articles all the way. She got sidetracked in Hong Kong and spent over a year working for The Hong Kong Standard, an English language daily in Hong Kong. Finally, she decided to abandon the glitter and tinsel of Asia’s boomtown for downhome hospitality and the good life. Trudy has a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism, a Bachelor of Science in Biology and a Bachelor of Arts in French. She speaks several languages.

Trudy has written for a number of regional and national publications, as well as a wide variety of other projects, everything from medical research compendiums and assorted ghost writing/public relations projects, to short stories and a travel book, entitled Off the Beaten Path in the Maritime Provinces. The sixth edition was released in the spring of 2007.

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Deanna Foster

Deanna Foster currently works at Dalhousie University, where she received her BA in History and English. Her first published work, A History of Hangings in Nova Scotia (Pottersfield Press), was a local bestseller. She has also written three novels, Broken Ivy (paranormal), Raven’s Blood (fantasy), and Fortunes of Madness (mystery). Her poetry, articles, short stories and book reviews have been published through Canadian media outlets. She lives with her two boys in Halifax

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Melanie Furlong

Melanie Furlong is full-time journalist who writes for Fine Lifestyles magazines across Canada and the U.S. She freelanced for nearly 15 years for a wide range of North American publications including the Canadian Healthcare Network, The Rotarian, Latitudes In-Flight Magazine, Canadian Contractor, Meetings and Incentive Travel, The Chronicle Herald, The Medical Post, East Coast Living, Atlantic Progress, Nature Canada and Living Healthy in Atlantic Canada.

She was mentored in the 2009/2010 Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia’s Mentorship program by Stephens Gerard Malone. She has studied fiction with Gwen Davies, Russell Barton, Valerie Compton and the Gotham Writers Workshop in NYC.

Melanie holds a Bachelor of Arts from Acadia University, where she majored in Spanish, as well as a Bachelor of Education Teaching English as a Second Language from Brock University. She taught English to adults and children in Finland, England, the Czech Republic and Canada for more than five years before embarking on a writing career.

She published her first novel, The Last Honest Man in Havana, with CreateSpace in August 2015.

She blogs at melaniefurlong.wordpress.com.

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Sue Goyette

Sue Goyette lives in Halifax and has published four books of poems, The True Names of Birds, Undone and outskirts from Brick Books, and Ocean, published by Gaspereau Press in April 2013. Her novel, Lures (HarperCollins), was published in 2002.

Sue has been nominated for several awards including the Governor General’s Award for Poetry, the Pat Lowther, the Gerald Lampert, the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, the Dartmouth Book Award and the Acorn-Plantos Award for People’s Poetry. Selections of her work won the 2008 CBC Literary Prize for Poetry, the 2010 Earle Birney Award and the 2011 Bliss Carman Poetry Award. She is the recipient of a Nova Scotia Established Artist Award as well as the Pat Lowther and Atlantic Poetry Awards.

Her poetry has appeared on the Toronto subway system, in wedding vows and spray-painted on a sidewalk somewhere in St. John, New Brunswick. Sue has taught at the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Sage Hill Experience and currently teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Dalhousie University.

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