Fiction (children’s) – Page 6 – Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia

Melanie Mosher

In grade two, Melanie received a silver dollar for winning an essay contest and she has been fascinated with writing ever since. She has many freelance articles to her credit and her first picture book was published by Fifth House Publishers in May 2014. Her YA novel, Goth Girl, was published in April 2017 by Nimbus Publishing and A Beginner’s Guide to Goodbye, a middle-grade novel, was published in June 2020, again with Nimbus Publishing. A Beginner’s Guide to Goodbye was a finalist in the TD Canadian Children’s Literature award and nominated for the Hackmatack Award. It won the “It Made me Feel” Award presented by Digitally Lit. Her fourth book, a middle-grade novel entitled Bertie Stewart is Perfectly Imperfect, was published by Nimbus in 2024, and was nominated for the Silver Birch Fiction Award.

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Doretta Groenendyk

Doretta graduated from NSCAD with a BA in Art Education. She then worked in Swaziland, Africa for a year and then Igloolik, Nunavut for another two. Before and after these diverse experiences, she was an avid traveller and tree planter.

Once settled in Nova Scotia, Doretta worked as an artist in classrooms through AVRSB, the program Arts Infusion, the Paints program, and as a volunteer. Her paintings are represented by the Harvest Gallery in Wolfville, Details Gallery in Charlottetown, and Art Sales and Rentals at the AGNS in Halifax.

Doretta has illustrated 5 children’s picture books, including Fiddles and Spoons (Dery Publishing Group) and Bounce, Beans and Burn (Acorn Press). She is the author and illustrator of I’m Writing a Story and Snow for Christmas (Acorn Press). Her 6th book, Thank You For My Bed, was published in Fall 2011.

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Gloria Wesley

Gloria Ann Wesley is an African Nova Scotian writer. She is a graduate of St. Francis Xavier University and has taught at all grade levels. She holds an Honorary Doctorate from Mount St. Vincent University. She resides in Halifax, Nova Scotia. To My Someday Child (1975), enables her to hold the distinction of being the first published Black Nova Scotian poet. Wesley’s poetry appears in three Canadian anthologies. Her novel’s include Chasing Freedom (2011), short-listed for the Ann Connor Brimer Award. If This Is Freedom(2013) One Book Nova Scotia Award 2016. Abagail’s Wish, 2016) and Righting Canada’s Wrongs Africville (2019) Ontario Library Association’s Best Bets Award. Bringing a unique and interesting perspective about African Nova Scotians, her Black Loyalist history presentation and readings are exciting and designed for students from Grades 3-12.

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Sheree Fitch

www.shereefitch.com

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Paul Zann

Paul is a versatile author: adult novel: A Real Son of a ‘Vitch; children’s books: The Aussie Six in Canada, The Aussie Six in Australia, The Aussie Six in Spain, and The Weirdest Class; book of satirical essays: You’ve Gotta be Kidding!; plays: Strike! and The Parasite/s; poetry book: Crouching at the Keyhole; numerous poems and stories in Canadian, U.S., Australian, and Spanish journals.

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Alice Walsh

Alice Walsh writes fiction and nonfiction for adults and children. Her published work includes nine books for children and young adults. Many of her books have been nominated for or won awards. A number of them have been listed as Best Books for Children and Teens in Canada. Her YA novel Pomiuk; Prince of the North (Dundurn 2005) won the Ann Connor Brimer award.

Alice graduated from St. Mary’s University with degrees in criminology and English, and from Acadia with a master’s in Children’s Literature. She has worked as a preschool teacher, volunteer probation officer, creative writing instructor, and hospital ward clerk.

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Jo Ann Yhard

Jo Ann is the author of the Canadian Children’s Bestseller (Quill and Quire), The Fossil Hunter of Sydney Mines, a middle reader mystery.

Jo Ann grew up addicted to Nancy Drew mysteries and cryptoquotes. She has lived in the Maritimes all her life. As an avid lover of beachcombing and playing tourist, she draws on local inspiration for her story settings – from fossil hunting to whale watching. The people and places around her are a treasure trove of ideas. Jo Ann lives in Halifax with her husband, James, where she writes mysteries and other stories on her yellow laptop, Bumble Bee.

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Carol Sinclair

Carol is writing a book entitled, The Darling Cannibals. She’s also an editor with Editors’ Association of Canada. Her forte is dialogue and character dynamic. She has been an actor and playwright in eight provinces for 35 years.

Recent projects are: The Last Bean Supper, about the loss of women volunteers with the closing of our churches, Far Flung, about immigrants setting up in rural Canada, and Vis Viva, about the women in early science. She was invited as Atlantic rep of the Canadian delegation to an international gathering of female playwrights in Mumbai, India, for her hard-hitting drama, Come Unto Me, about a social worker who turns vigilante when a kiddie porn pervert is publically named and then sent home to await trial.

Carol has combined writing and performance for TV as an issue satirist on Rita Deverell’s Skylight Series for Vision TV. Three early years at Second City forged her conviction that humour propels message. Screenplays of her all-female cast comedy Idyll Gossip and the highly romantic comedy, The Summer of the Handley-Page have been funded by Ontario Film Development and Telefilm. The latter script was also produced for national radio by CBC, as was her one-woman tour de force, Brownie from Hell. She has been, for fourteen years, director of Sinc Ink. She is currently fund-raising to produce her adaptation of ScotiaGiller prize-winner Linden MacInyre’s novel, Causeway.

Ship’s Company Theatre premiered her play, Ferry Tales, her play, Share, and her large-cast comedy, The Summer of the Handley-Page. Another huge-cast piece, Firefly, was staged at Dal Theatre as well as the Blyth Festival.

She has been writer in residence at St. FX, and with Dalhousie’s Medical Humanities, where she wrote Défense de Fumer, which toured Nova Scotia, Ottawa, Vancouver, Charlottetown, Saint John, and Arviat, Rankin Inlet and Iqaluit, Nunavut.

A multiple recipient of awards from Canada Council’s Writing and Theatre Sections, and the Provincial Councils of Ontario and NS, and the Municipality of the District of Guysborough, her other professionally produced plays include Young Hate (GG nominated) Brownie From Hell (Crow’s Theatre, Toronto), Firefly (Blyth Festival, Blyth, ON) Idyll Gossip, Presents and Old Boots (Mulgrave Road Theatre, NS), Hansel & Gretel & Handsome & Grateful (Festival Antigonish).

Professional productions have been as far-reaching as Toscana, Italy; Galway, Ireland; Perth, Australia; Cape Town, South Africa; London, England; Belgrade in the former Yugoslavia; and in Cincinnati, US, as well as in every province in Canada and Nunavut. Carol is a member of WIF-T Atlantic, the Editors’ Association of Canada, Canadian Actors’ Equity Association and ACTRA.

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Norene Smiley

After graduating from NSCAD in the early 70’s, Norene worked in the not-for-profit sector with the elderly and persons with intellectual disabilities, and in the book publishing industry. She has been a bookseller, editor, writer, teacher, book reviewer, book publisher, publicist, event organizer and cultural administrator.

She belonged to a children’s writing group for over twelve years, during which two anthologies of writing for children were published. She has served on the boards of many arts organizations, regionally and nationally, primarily to do with books, writing or fine art. She was a founding member of the Nova Scotia Children’s Literature Award and the Ann Connor Brimer Award for Atlantic Children’s Literature. In 2002, she received the Mayor’s Award for Cultural Achievement in Literature.

After five years of facilitating The Word On The Street Book Festival and coordinating the Hackmatack Children’s Choice Book Award for another six, she moved to Pugwash NS where she has become involved in community development. She has been an organizer of Writing on Fire Youth Experience on the North Shore of NS and Art Jam! with Rita Wilson and Helen Castonguay since 2013. She received the Governor General’s Sovereign Medal for Volunteerism in 2019.

Besides writing for children, she is a visual artist, scriptwriter and filmmaker. In 2005/2006, she wrote, directed and edited a one-minute film, Saving the Best for Last, through the Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative, and created a short digital mock-documentary, Urban Myths, with the help of a Media Arts Scholarship through the Centre for Art Tapes. Between 2017 and 2020, she wrote and co-produced a short film, Maurice, with collaborator Shannon Bell.

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Jill MacLean

Jill MacLean writes to stretch her limits and engage her curiosity. She writes to communicate, to be read. She writes because she loves being inhabited by characters and intertwining their stories in a balance of the intuitive and the rational, not always knowing where she’s going but steered by what feels true.

She has an honours degree in biology and is a keen naturalist. Her masters degree in theological studies, an agnostic’s search for answers, made her questions more sophisticated and encouraged her to write poetry. Her collection, The Brevity of Red (2003), was shortlisted for two awards. Poetry, she’s been told, requires the least number of best words, a good discipline for any writing.

While living in Prince Edward Island, she spent three years researching an 18th century French settlement. Her biography of Jean Pierre Roma, published by the PEI Heritage Foundation, was reissued in 2005.

Her grandson’s request that she write him a book led to three middle-grade novels and two young adult, four awards and numerous nominations, four of them international. Her YA novel, Home Truths, is on the Nova Scotia school curriculum.

She has participated in Writers in the Schools, Word on the Street, the Literacy for Life Conference, the TD Book Tour, Read by the Sea and a conference for the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) in London, England. She’s conducted workshops, school presentations and readings, many for the Canada Council, across the country.

She’s hiked the High Arctic tundra and the rainforests of St. Vincent, driven through a very long, one-way, unlit, water-dripping tunnel in the Faroe Islands, kayaked Johnstone Strait and been too close to a grizzly in the Mackenzie Mountains: a strong sense of adventure, in other words. Why else, after writing five contemporary novels for young readers, would she embark on a novel for adults set in 14th century England?

That novel – several years later! – is in the process of being self-published, with the help of a company in BC. She’s hoping to to have a book in hand by late spring.

She was a palliative care volunteer for several years, and has been a dog walker for the Winnipeg Humane Society and the Nova Scotia SPCA. She can often be found in her perennial gardens, a pastime she likens to writing: you start with a rough plan, then nature takes over and you’re left to weed and transplant and weed some more, always with an eye out for interesting suprises.

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Fiction (children's)