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Fiction (adult)

Claire Horn

Claire Horn is a Dartmouth-based writer and researcher. She has a PhD in law and has researched and taught in the area of law and policy governing sexual and reproductive health, rights, and technologies for six years. Her nonfiction work has appeared in Aeon, Narratively, Entropy, the Walrus, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Nursing Clio, and the Penguin young adult anthology Feminists Don’t Wear Pink and Other Lies. Her first book, Eve: The Disobedient Future of Birth, was longlisted for the Science Writers and Communicators of Canada Book Award.

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Clare Goulet

Writer of essays, poems, stories and hybrid forms; editor/consultant for academic and literary manuscripts in arts and sciences. My latest book is Graphis scripta: writing lichen (Gaspereau Press 2024). Research passions are metaphor, biopoetics, polyphony, & hybrid scholarly-creative-botanical forms.

I teach undergrad courses in creative writing and editing at the Mount, where I run its Writing Centre and collaborate with diverse partners on and off campus. First adjunct faculty to win its university-wide faculty teaching award. As an educator I aim for transformative, inclusive learning experiences.

As a British/québécoise hybrid, raised in a mixed-race family, schooled in different countries, please don’t ask me where I’m from! I survive my writing deadlines with wildly bad dancing. Total lichen obsessive.

In my writing workshops for adults and youth, I love renewing a person’s relationship to their own writing practice.

I live in Kjipuktuk/Halifax, Nova Scotia, on a road that escapes into trail and woods and ocean along the Northwest Arm.

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Donna Jones Alward

Since 2006, New York Times bestseller Donna Jones Alward has enchanted readers with stories of happy endings and homecomings that have won several awards and been translated into over a dozen languages. She’s worked as an administrative assistant, teaching assistant, in retail and as a stay-at-home-mom, but always knew her degree in English Literature would pay off, as she is now happy to be a full-time writer. Her new historical fiction tales blend her love of history with characters who step beyond their biggest fears to claim the lives they desire.

Donna currently lives in Nova Scotia, Canada, with her husband and cats. You can often find her near the water, either kayaking on the lake or walking the sandy beaches to refill her creative well.

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Lindsey Harrington

Lindsey Harrington is a Nova Scotian writer with Newfoundland roots. Her fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry are deeply influenced by both places and her place within them. She’s a regular organizer and host of the dART Speak monthly writers’ open mic and other fun, local literary events. She’s also a professional facilitator, covering topics such as therapeutic writing, developing your personal writing strategy, performing your pieces, authors online, and ekphrasis, prompt, and response poetry.

In 2023, she was longlisted for the CBC Nonfiction Prize, shortlisted for the Fiddlehead Creative Nonfiction Prize, and received a Canada Council grant to work on her childfree memoir. She’s excited to see what 2024 brings.

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Barbara Emodi

My background is in journalism, political communications, and teaching. I have over a decade of experience teaching creative non-fiction in the Department of Communications at Mount Saint Vincent University. Currently I am a panelist on CBC Halifax radio’s longest running political panel “The Spinsters.”

I write non-fiction and fiction, primarily cozy mysteries set in Nova Scotia. I work with a US-based publisher who thinks this province is “exotic.”

I have extensive experience working as a developmental editor with a wide variety of new and emerging authors across many genres. I have learned so much from other writers. With my own experience teaching writing and in the traditional publishing industry, I enjoy helping other authors bring out the best in their own work.

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Tina Capalbo

As a teacher, writer, mom, and life-long creative, Tina Capalbo has written everything from lesson plans, blogs, stories, and plays, to volunteer manuals, educator packs, and architectural proposals.

Tina completed her Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Education degrees at Western and her Master of Arts degree at Dalhousie. She has taught high school English and Drama in London and Halifax, English as an Additional Language in Tokyo, Toronto and Halifax, and thousands of writing classes online.

As a WITS author, Tina loves exploring stories with students and offers two workshops: (1) ‘Ari and the Very Loud Bird!’ is a workshop with early elementary students (grades P-3), featuring Ari, an upbeat, non-binary kiddo, who loves to sleep in. The workshop includes a lively reading, a visit with Ari the puppet, and a book chat. Students create a songbird, invent a bird call, and become a noisy chorus of birds. (2) ‘Main Character Energy’ is a creative nonfiction writing workshop for secondary students (grades 10-12). Students engage in life-writing, exploring elements of journaling, memoir, personal essay, personal monologue, and phase autobiography.

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Jen Colclough

Jen Colclough is a Pushcart-nominated poet, novelist, and digital artist from Nova Scotia. She is the author of the poetry collection Our Little Agonies, published in 2025 by Montreal Publishing Company. She holds a Master of Arts in Classics from Western and a Bachelor of Arts from Acadia University. Her writings have been featured in numerous publications including CRAFT Literary, Tabula Rasa Review, Porch to Porch: A Maritime Haiku Anthology, Heimat Review, ionosphere, MORIA, and Free the Verse. In 2023, her graduate research appeared in the Journal of Ancient History.

In Winter 2024, Jen Colclough held the Shannon Residency at Beinn Mhàbu in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. She is currently querying an historical fiction novel and developing a serial drama for a major streaming service.

 

Freelance editing services available.

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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