Fiction (adult)

Joseph Howse

Joseph Howse writes fiction and poetry, as well as technical books on computer programming and image analysis. He lives in a Nova Scotian fishing village, where he chats with his cats and nurtures an orchard of hardy fruit trees.

Joseph’s debut novel, The Girl in the Water, has won the 2023 Independent Press Award for Literary Fiction and the 2023 IAN Book of the Year Awards for Outstanding Multicultural Fiction. He is currently working on the sequel, The Circus and the Atom. These novels are the start of a multigenerational saga called Next Year’s Snow, which hinges on the friendship and strife of two families in the Soviet/post-Soviet world.

Some of Joseph’s latest work is published or forthcoming in Litbreak Magazine, Humana Obscura, paint me (37th Anthology of the New Zealand Poetry Society), Haiku Canada Review, and The Poetry Lighthouse Anthology (Volume II).

Joseph has experience doing business, volunteer work, and speaking engagements on six continents. He has won several awards from Bpeace (a pro bono consulting group) for his work on business mentorship projects in El Salvador and Guatemala.

As a graduate of Dalhousie University, Joseph holds a BA in French, MBA in International Business, MA in International Development Studies, and Master of Computer Science.

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Jan Morrison

Jan Morrison’s poems have appeared in literary journals such as Grain, Pottersfield Portfolio, and Newfoundland Quarterly. Her plays, States of Grace; Death, the Musical; Shroom!; Fields of Crimson; and Mrs. Finney’s Hat have been staged at The Chester Playhouse; Neptune Theatre; The Halifax Fringe Festival; and Eastern Front Theatre. She has recently had her debut novel published by Boulder Books – The Crooked Knife. When not writing Jan likes to garden and ramble the shore near her home in Prospect, NS.

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Sharon English

Sharon English is the author of the newly released novel Night in the World (Freehand Books), as well as two collections of short stories, Uncomfortably Numb and Zero Gravity. Zero Gravity was longlisted for the Giller Prize and ReLit Award, included in the Globe & Mail‘s Top 100 titles for the year, and recently translated into Serbian. Night in the World has been described as “a splendid and searing novel, pressed up against the tremours of our times.”

Sharon’s stories and essays have also appeared in numerous journals, including Best Canadian Stories, Canadian Notes & Queries, and Dark Mountain in Britain. She was guest co-editor of the Winter 2020 special issue of CNQ, “Writing in an Age of Unravelling,” which featured writing that responds to ecological crisis.

Originally from London, ON, for over 20 years Sharon lived in Toronto and taught creative writing at Innis College, University of Toronto, where she now serves as part-time Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, in the Writing & Rhetoric program. A research team member of the Persephone Project, Sharon has been dedicated to re-imagining our relationship to home in the context of ecological and social crisis, and to pursuing writing and storytelling that aligns with the natural world. Her courses involve workshop-based and experiential learning.

Sharon has split her time between Toronto and Nova Scotia for years, and moved with her family in 2021 to an old farm on the Shubenacadie River.

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Habiba Diallo

Habiba Diallo is the author of #BlackInSchool. She is the inaugural winner of the Senator Don Oliver Black Voices prize and was a finalist in the 2020 Bristol Short Story Prize. She was also one of six finalists in the 2018 London Book Fair Pitch Competition. She is a women’s health advocate passionate about bringing an end to a maternal health condition called obstetric fistula. You can find her on X, Facebook, and YouTube @haalabeeba

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Carolyn Jean Nicholson

My interest is in researching and writing historical fiction and non-fiction. My book, William Forsyth: Land of Hopes and Dreams – a story from early Nova Scotia, was published in 2021 and my second book has the working title Traitors, Cannibals, Highlanders, and Vikings. It’s about the people who came to Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island in the 1700s and early 1800s. It is due to be published in March 2023.

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K.R. Byggdin

K.R. Byggdin is the author of Wonder World (Enfield & Wizenty 2022), a ReLit Award finalist and winner of the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. They hold a BA with honours in English and Creative Writing from Dalhousie University, an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph, and their short stories, poetry, and nonfiction have appeared in anthologies and journals across Canada, the UK, and New Zealand. Born and raised on the Prairies, they now call Kjipuktuk home.

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Bethany Lake

Bethany Lake is a playwright, novelist, and freelance writer from Nova Scotia. As a playwright, she has had three of her plays produced in Halifax. Her play, No Animal, has been published in The Furious Gazelle, a literary magazine based in New York City.

She is a regular contributor to Rue Morgue magazine, where she has conducted interviews with high-profile actors and directors such as Heather Langenkamp (A Nightmare on Elm Street), Mark Soper (The World According to Garp, Blood Rage) and Damien Leone (Terrifier, Terrifier 2). Bethany’s work has also appeared in The Big Takeover, PRISM international, and Write magazine.

Her first novel, In the Midst of Irrational Things (publisher TBD), began its development in the 2018 Alistair MacLeod Mentorship Program.

Bethany received a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre Studies from Dalhousie University before continuing her playwriting education at Tarragon Theatre in Toronto, ON.

She is currently working on her second novel, Silo, as well as a book of nonfiction essays.

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Joe Britto

Joe Britto was born in the UK and now lives in Nova Scotia where he works as a writing and mindset coach.

Joe writes upmarket fiction about the complexity of the human condition, and explores themes such as self-deception, discrimination, and the beauty and tenderness that come from being human.

He has two books published: one novel: Worth, A Story of Love and Self-Esteem (New World Publishing, 2000); and one non-fiction business book, The Six Attributes of a Leadership Mindset (Crown House Publishing, 2019). He has also published articles on mindset for various magazines including Training Industry and HR Gazette.

Joe holds a BA in English with a minor in creative writing, and an MA in modern and contemporary literature. He has won the Jane Law Shaw Scholarship for demonstrated ability in the arts, and placed second in the Hisa-Marshall Literary Prize from St Mary’s University, Halifax.

He has presented work for the ILA and CIPD in the UK and given readings at Chapters/Indigo in Canada. A member of the Nova Scotia Writers’ Council, Joe is currently serving on the Board of the Afterwords Literary Festival. He is the founding member Writer’s Together and teaches creative writing for the Halifax Library.

Joe’s is currently shopping his newest novel, and is working on his second upmarket book club novel.

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Brenda MacLennan-Dunphy

Writer, director and producer, Brenda MacLennan-Dunphy has had two novels published by Pottersfield Press as well- Never Speak of This Again (2018) and The Silence of the Vessel (2020), which was nominated for an Atlantic Book Award. Four of Brenda’s plays have been on the stage at Strathspey Place, a 500 soft seat theatre in Mabou, Cape Breton- John Allan Cameron’s Last Show (November 2021), John Archie and Nellie (2016, 2012) , The Weddin’ Dance (2013), and Displacement (2014). Her play The Reiteach was put at two small stages in 2020. She was a featured writer at the 2021 Cabot Trail Writers Festival and also won the HR Bill Percy Novel Prize in 2017 for Never Speak of This Again. Born and raised in Inverness County, the mother of four is a teacher by trade, but a gypsy by nature. She loves to find characters along the way in life. Brenda lives in Skye Glen, Inverness County, with her wonderful and patient husband, Ed.

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Michelle Wamboldt

Michelle Wamboldt was born and raised in Truro, Nova Scotia. She is a graduate of Dalhousie University and the Humber School of Journalism in Toronto.

Her debut novel, Birth Road, won the 2024 Margaret & John Savage First Book Award. Michelle’s short fiction has appeared in The Dalhousie Review and Moose House Publication’s, Blink and You’ll Miss It, Vol II.

Michelle lives on the beautiful South Shore of Nova Scotia.

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