Fiction (adult)

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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Greg Cook

Gregory M. Cook was born in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. As one of three poets in his immediate family, he has made writers and their survival a personal and a professional study. His biography of his close friend of twenty years, One Heart, One Way/ Alden Nowlan: A Writer’s Life, was undertaken following a two-year appointment as writer-in-residence at the University of Waterloo. More recently he has lived in Toronto, Fredericton, and Saint John, New Brunswick, where he is writing a biography of his friend, novelist Ernest Buckler (1908-1984).

Cook has read from his works in schools and universities in all Canadian provinces, and the Yukon where he was in residence at Berton House Writers’ Retreat – as well as in Maine and Georgia, USA; England; the Netherlands; and Germany. He is a member of Writers’ Union of Canada, The League of Canadian Poets and the Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick, and an honourary member of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia.

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Lesley Crewe

Lesley is the author of eight novels and a screenwriter for the movie Relative Happiness, based on her first novel. She is also a columnist for The Chronicle Herald. She lives in Homeville, Cape Breton.

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Wayne Curtis

Wayne Curtis was born near Blackville, New Brunswick in 1943. He was educated at the local schoolhouse and St. Thomas University, majoring in English. He started writing prose in the late sixties. His work has been described by Books in Canada as “a pleasure to read, for no detail escapes his discerning eye.”

He has been a contributor to several newspapers including The National Post and The Globe and Mail, as well as commercial magazines; Quill and Quire, Outdoor Canada, Fly Fishermen, Atlantic Insight, The Atlantic Advocate, The Atlantic Salmon Journal and The New Brunswick Reader. Winner of the David Adams Richards and George Woodcock awards, Wayne’s stories have appeared in literary journals: The Cormorant, Pottersfield Portfolio, Nashwaak Review, Antigonish Review, Origins, Atlantica and New Maritimes. His short stories have been dramatized for CBC Radio and CBC Television. In the spring of 2005 he recieved an Honorary Doctrine Degree (letters) from St. Thomas University. Wayne Curtis has lived in Southern Ontario with stints in Cuba nad the Yukon. He now divides his time between his cabin on the Miramichi and the city of Fredericton.

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Gwen Davies

Gwen Davies writes short stories and novels and the occasional essay. In 2000 she founded the acclaimed writing retreat Community of Writers, a summer retreat at the Tatamagouche Centre. She teaches creative writing at the Nova Scotia Community College and in private workshops and retreats, and particularly enjoys working with new writers. She earns a living as a consultant in clear language and design, and boosts her spirit doing parkour — check out this video on Halifax parkour [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEZLdVbD56E].

Gwen grew up as an Air Force Brat, moving with her strange and interesting family around Ontario and France and exploring Europe with them in a VW camper. She graduated from Wilfird Laurier with a BA Honours in English and later from King’s with a BJ and holds an Adult Education Certificate from the Tatamagouche Centre. Over the years she has taught high school English, worked with health food, written stories for magazines and newspapers including The Globe and Mail, and worked in community development and various types of consulting. For many years, she earned her living editing public materials (like the NS Power Bill and the Youth Criminal Justice Act) into language that was clear and accessible to its intended audience.

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Pamela Ditchoff

Pamela Ditchoff was born in Lansing, Michigan on September 21, 1950. She received a BA in Communication Arts from Michigan State University (1982), and an MA in English/Creative Writing from Michigan State University (1985). In the mid-1980s, Ditchoff worked at WFSL-TV47 in Lansing as head copywriter/creative consultant and then as a Graduate Teaching Assistant at Michigan State University.During this period, her early fiction and poetry was published in various literary magazines. She taught in elementary and secondary schools with the Writer’s In Schools program, and Interact Press published two of her texts for teachers. In 1993, Ditchoff was recognized in Who’s Who in Writers, Editors & Poets: United States & Canada, 1992-1993 for her significant literary contributions. Ditchoff moved to Liverpool in 2006, and has conducted classes there with WFNS and SCANS.

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Sarah Emsley

Sarah Emsley’s debut novel, The Austens (Pottersfield, 2025) brings to life the story of Jane Austen’s friendship with her sister-in-law Fanny Austen, who lived in Halifax, Nova Scotia with her naval captain husband during the years when Jane was writing Pride and Prejudice and other novels that would eventually make her famous. Sarah is also the author of Jane Austen’s Philosophy of the Virtues (Palgrave, 2005) and a history of St. Paul’s in the Grand Parade (Formac, 1999), the church in Halifax where Jane Austen’s niece Cassy was baptized in 1809.

Sarah has hosted several blog series celebrations of Austen’s work at www.sarahemsley.com, and she edited a collection of essays on Jane Austen and the North Atlantic for the Jane Austen Society (2006). She received her PhD from Dalhousie University, held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford, taught classes on Austen in the Writing Program at Harvard University, and now lives in Halifax with her family.

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Geoff Butler

Geoff Butler is a painter, writer and book illustrator. He was born on Fogo Island, Nfld., near Brimstone Head which has been designated by the Flat Earth Society as one of the four corners of the earth.

Geoff practices his art daily so as not to fall over the edge. He has self-published five books: Art of War: Painting it out of the Picture (1990); The Look of Angels: Angels in Art (2004), a collection of poems, songs, stories, paintings and drawings; and With Every Breath We Take (2007), a modern fable in which a snowflake helps put an end to war; Our Own Little World: in paintings and verse (2013); and One Swallow Makes a Summer Meal: allegories in paintings and verse (2016). Every now and then, he strolls down Alphabet Soup Road to write and illustrate children’s books.

He is a graduate of Memorial University of Newfoundland and Syracuse University. He also studied at the Art Students’ League in New York City. His paintings have been exhibited at, and toured by, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. He has been a visual arts recipient of a Nova Scotia Arts Council Creation grant and a Canada Council Established Artist grant. In 2006, he was elected a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. He lives in the small village of Granville Ferry, N.S.

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Jonathan Campbell

Jonathan Campbell is the author of short stories, plays, and television dramas. Born in Montreal, raised in Cape Breton, he received a B.A. from Acadia University and an English M.A. from Dalhousie University. He lives in the Annapolis Valley with his wife, painter Lindee Climo.

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