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Fiction (adult)

Thibault Jacquot-Paratte

From the Annapolis Valley. Travelled across North Amrica, Europe, India, Japan, Cameroon, Tunisia. Bachelor’s of Nordic studies from the Sorbonne in 2015, Master’s in sociology in 2017; year of study in Tromsø, Norway, Study certificates from the University of Vaasa (Fi.), and The Askov Folkehøjskole (DK.).

Started publishing poetry in 2010, has since published poetry, short stories, essays, and theatre in both English and French, in Canada, Europe and India. His first three plays were published in Paris in 2016-2017; first poetry collection in Allahabad in 2020. In 2017, co-directed and co-wrote one film (Danish-Estonian coproduction). Also a musician and a songwriter, has had the opportunity to play in Canada, France, Germany, Norway, Denmark, India and japan, and has produced multiple recordings. He has also been invited as an official poet to certain events, such as one of the official poets of the SNA at the 2019 CMA, in Moncton. His published work ranges across almost all genres – realism, fantasy, absurdism, abstract prose, poetry…

Thibault Jacquot-Paratte – Wikipedia

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Dr. G.V. Loewen

G.V. Loewen is the author of forty-seven books and is one of Canada’s leading contemporary thinkers. His non-fiction works include books in education, ethics, health, aesthetics and social theory. He recently wrote an eleven volume adventure saga for young persons and other shorter fiction works. He is a student of phenomenology and hermeneutics. Born in Victoria, January 31, 1966, Loewen was educated at the University of Victoria with a BA and MA in anthropology and at the University of British Columbia, receiving the PhD in anthropology in 1997. He held two tenure stream positions in the United States before taking up his academic position in Saskatoon, Canada, in 2005, where he was chair of the sociology department for five years and from which he retired in 2018. Over the course of his career, Loewen won two major teaching awards at two universities and was nominated for four others.

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Nicola Davison

Nicola Davison is a writer and portrait photographer, living in Dartmouth. She studied English at Dalhousie University and was on the board of directors with the WFNS from 2017 to 2020.

In 2016, she completed the Alistair Macleod Mentorship Program, polishing her first novel, In the Wake, with Carol Bruneau. It won the Margaret & John Savage First Book Award,  the Miramichi Reader’s Best First Book award and was a finalist for the Dartmouth Book Award.

Her second novel Decoding Dot Grey (Spring 2022) is a coming-of-age story about a  quirky young woman working at an animal shelter, struggling to find a connection with the world. It was nominated for a White Pine Award and won the 2023 Ann Connor Brimer Book Award for YA.

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Tim Covell

Tim lived in various areas of British Columbia and Ontario before moving to Nova Scotia. A part-time student for more than thirty years, and still taking courses, he has degrees in English Literature, Film Studies, and Canadian Studies. He researches film classification systems, and has published three academic papers, including an international study of how film classification agencies accommodate children’s participation rights under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Other publications include poetry, personal essays, short humour, biographies, and film reviews. He published his first romance novel, Ocean’s Lure, in 2021, and is working on more romance novels. He is a member of Romance Writers of America, Romance Writers of Atlantic Canada, The American Copy Editors Society, and the Open Heart Forgery poetry cooperative. His day job is technical writer for a software company. More at www.covell.ca

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Jacqueline Dumas

Jacqueline Dumas’s latest novel is The Heart Begins Here, (Inanna Publications, 2018).

Her previous writing experience includes two published novels: Madeleine & the Angel (Fifth House, 1989); The Last Sigh (Fifth House, 1993); a children’s picture book: And I’m Never Coming Back(Annick Press, 1986); and a one-act play, Secrets,whichwas produced at the 2013 Edmonton International Fringe Festival.

She was born in Alberta and spent most of her working life there. She has extensive experience in the book business, including ownership and management of two Edmonton bookshops over the years, most recently Orlando Books (1993-2002), a progressive bookstore that specialized in post-colonial issues, cultural studies, feminisms, queer studies, and literature from small presses.

 

When Orlando Books closed, Dumas went back to school and obtained a Master of Education in Teaching English as a Second Language from the University of Alberta. She has since taught English at Grant MacEwan University, the University of Alberta, and Dalhousie University. She has also designed and facilitated creative writing workshops and served as coordinator of the Writer-in-Exile program for the City of Edmonton.

She moved to Nova Scotia in July 2013.

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Oisin Curran

Teaching Experience

While completing an MFA in Creative Writing at Brown University, I led fiction-writing workshops for undergraduates at the beginner and intermediate levels.

Some years later, I taught a screenwriting workshop to undergraduates at the University of Maine at Orono.

More recently I led a fiction workshop at the Inverness Centre for the Arts in Cape Breton.

This fall (2018) I will be teaching fiction workshops at the Cabot Trail Writers Festival in Cape Breton and at the Word Festival in Blue Hill, Maine.

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Cooper Lee Bombardier

Cooper Lee Bombardier is a queer, trans writer and visual artist living in Halifax. He is the author of the memoir-in-essays Pass With Care, a finalist for the 2021 Firecracker Award in Nonfiction. His writing appears in The Kenyon Review, The Malahat Review, Ninth Letter, CutBank, Nailed Magazine, Longreads, Narratively, BOMB, and The Rumpus; and in 18 anthologies, including the Lambda Literary Award-winning anthology, The Remedy–Essays on Queer Health Issues, and Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Speculative Fiction From Transgender Writers, which won a 2018 American Library Association Stonewall Book Award. The Huffington Post listed Cooper as one of “10 Transgender Artists Who Are Changing The Landscape Of Contemporary Art.” He teaches in the MFA in Creative Nonfiction program at University of King’s College.

FB: cooperfrickinleee Twitter: @CooperLeeB  IG: cooper_lee_bombardier

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Dian Day

Dian Day is the author of the award-winning novels The Clock of Heaven (Inanna, 2008) and The Madrigal (Inanna, 2018). Her third book (still untitled) is a graphic novel for middle grade readers (with artist Amanda White) is forthcoming with Second Story Press in Spring 2026. Dian recently completed a doctoral degree in Cultural Studies at Queen’s University in work focused on the portrayal of poverty and food insecurity in children’s fiction.

Dian undertakes research, writing, and editing contracts alongside work on her fourth novel. She lives and writes in Piktuk/Pictou County.

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Linda H.Y. Hegland

Linda H.Y. Hegland is an award-winning lyric essay, short story and poetry writer, and photographer who lives in Bridgetown, Nova Scotia, Canada. Her writing and photos most often reflect the influence of place, and one’s relationship with it. She has published in several literary and art journals, and has had work nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She says this of her writing:

 

My writing practice is an inquiry into the the landscape of the body, geographical landscape, place, memory, narrative, and meaning. I intend that my writing will unearth truths and help me to taste, in retrospection, the essence of what it was to live that moment – that small story. I write to give voice to unspoken memories, to unspoken experience.

 

These memories, physical and emotional, the communal history, the memories marked on our bodies – they tell stories. Some stark, some catastrophic, some just detours, footnotes. Some are our runes.

 

I am deeply moved by the ways in which longing, and being lost, and the attempt to find a definition of one’s self inspire the art. My writing originates from a place of expressing authentic voice.

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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