Originally from Dartmouth, Beth Ann completed a science degree at Dalhousie University. She works as an online ESL Teacher and coaches youth soccer in the summer. Beth Ann is passionate about the environment and enjoys being active. Early morning runs, bike rides, paddles, and yoga are her favourite things. She lives on the South Shore of Nova Scotia with her husband, two sons, and their dog, Gordie.
Nancy is the author/photographer of 4 picture books in the Secret Life of Squirrels series, and two board books featuring Oakley the Squirrel. She is a retired high school Family Studies teacher and Guidance Counsellor. In 2010 she started making squirrel size props (a barbecue, mailbox, washer and dryer, etc) and dioramas, and she captured photos of backyard squirrels when they explored her sets to find the hidden nuts. Her humorous photos of the squirrels appeared online and in newspapers and magazines world-wide. In 2014 her first children’s book, The Secret Life of Squirrels, was published in Canada, U.S., Japan and South Korea.
For classroom visits, Nancy brings along a big tote box filled with a variety of her homemade props and she talks about the challenges of writing a story that is illustrated with photos of her backyard squirrels as well as the fun of creating her props with found, recycled and dollar store materials. She invites students to think about what the next adventures of her squirrels could be if they were writing the next book and how they would make the props and get the squirrels to interact.
Nancy is available for live classroom presentations and also for Google Meet/ Zoom sessions, which went over very well in the 2020-2022, and with schools in other provinces.
Elizabeth Peirce is a Halifax-based author, editor, teacher, and gardener. For Nimbus Publishing, she has authored and co-authored two historical fiction books about infamous cases of piracy in Nova Scotian history, Saladin and The Pirate Rebel, one guide to vegetable gardening in a tough climate (Grow Organic, winner of the 2011 APMA Best Atlantic Published Book award) and a preserving cook and guide book, You Can Too! Her book for children, The Big Flush, is dedicated to her young son and his horror of loudly-flushing public toilets. In 2019, she published Lost and Found: Recovering Your Spirit After a Concussion, a toolbox of strategies for healing from a difficult injury. When she’s not writing and editing, she enjoys cooking, canning, and encouraging people to tear up their lawns and grow some vegetables! Visit her website at https://elizabethpeirce.ca
Elizabeth will be offering virtual workshops based on her books through the WITS program in 2020-21, including:
(for P-2) How your biggest fears can make the best stories
(for grades 3-9) What is food security and where does our food come from?
(for grades 9-12) Writing to heal: surviving and thriving under challenging circumstances
Wade Albert White is a novelist, a part-time lecturer in ancient history and languages, and a stay-at-home parent. Born and raised in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, Wade has also lived significant portions of his life in Moncton, New Brunswick, and Toronto, Ontario. He also once spent an hour and a half in Hawaii.
Wade holds a Master of Arts degree in Hebrew Language and Literature from the University of Toronto. In addition to working as a teaching assistant while finishing his studies, he has lectured for several years at both Acadia Divinity College in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, as well as Crandall University in Moncton, New Brunswick. He most often teaches Introduction to Classical Hebrew or a related subject. Other jobs have included being the managing director of a children’s summer camp for three years running, working in a university archives, working as a university tutor, and picking apples.
Wade’s first novel, The Adventurer’s Guide to Successful Escapes, was released on September 13, 2016. It was a BookExpo America (BEA) 2016 Middle Grade Buzz Book, and Indies Introduce Summer/Fall 2016 selection, was included in the 2016 ABC Best Books for Young Readers as well as the Children’s Book Review Best New Kids Books for Preteens and Tweens (September 2016), and received a starred listing by the Canadian Children’s Book Centre in the Spring 2017 “Best Books for Kids & Teens.” Wade will be receiving the Emerging Author Award from the Atlantic Independent Bookseller’s Association on July 9, 2017. His second novel, The Adventurer’s Guide to Dragons (and Why They Keep Biting Me), will be released on September 5, 2017, and he is currently working on the third installment in the series, The Adventurer’s Guide to Treasure (and How to Steal It).
In relationship to his writing career, specifically that of being an author of middle grade fiction, Wade has given presentations and readings and conducted workshops with students in schools and libraries in both the US and Canada. Most of his contact has been with students in Grades 4–6, but on occasion he has presented both to younger and older audiences as well.
When he isn’t writing, presenting, or preparing lecture notes, Wade enjoys studying hand-drawn animation and filmmaking. He currently lives in the Annapolis Valley area of Nova Scotia with his wife and their three sons. Also, he has one real cat and one pretend one, and they get along fabulously.
Dana Mills released his debut collection of short stories, Someone Somewhere, with Gaspereau Press in 2013. He has been published in many of Canada’s top literary journals, including Geist, The New Quarterly and subTerrain, and has been shortlisted for the Journey Prize. He lives in Wolfville, Nova Scotia.
Margo Wheaton is an award-winning poet and editor and is the author of Rags of Night in Our Mouths (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022) and Wild Green Light (with David Adams Richards, Pottersfield Press, 2021). She lives and writes in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on the traditional and ancestral territory of the Mi’kmaq.
Her debut poetry collection The Unlit Path Behind the House (McGill-Queen’s, 2016) won the Fred Kerner Award (Canadian Authors’ Association) for Book of the Year and the Alfred G. Bailey Award from the Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick. It was also shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award, the J.M. Abraham Award, the Fred Cogswell Award for Literary Excellence, and the Relit Award.
Margo holds a Masters degree in English and a Certificate in Adult Education, both from Dalhousie University. Her essays and book reviews have appeared in a number of publications, including The Fiddlehead, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, the Guernica Series on Writers, Pottersfield Portfolio, The Antigonish Review and The Coast.
Her poetry has appeared in magazines and literary journals across the country including The Literary Review of Canada, The Antigonish Review, Event, The Fiddlehead, The New Quarterly, Prairie Fire, and Prism International. Her poems have been set to choral music and performed at the University of Toronto.
Comments about Rags of Night in Our Mouths (McGill-Queen’s, 2022):
”Rags of Night in Our Mouths is a haunting masterpiece of intimate negotiation. Harnessing all powers of the senses, these poems reach out to feel their way through darkened rooms, wild weather, and lost landscapes of the past and present. This is an unforgettable performance, and perhaps the most viscerally honest book of poetry to come out of Atlantic Canada in the last decade.” – Alexander MacLeod, author of Animal Person and Light Lifting
”Margo Wheaton’s poetry of brooding hours and raw intensities is polished by phrasing of rare precision. In places both outer and inner, we hear a ‘primal/speech of branches clanking’ and learn that ‘family’s/an old night, its chaos Miltonic.’ Readers will find themselves riveted, their lives expanded by this strong-hearted book packed with truthfulness, tenderness, and music.” – Brian Bartlett, author of Daystart Songflight: A Morning Journal
Matt Robinson lives in Halifax, NS with his family.
His newest collection of poems, Tangled & Cleft, was published by Gaspereau Press in Fall 2021.
His previous publications include Against (Gaspereau Press, 2018); The Telephone Game (Baseline Press, 2017); Some Nights It’s Entertainment; Some Other Nights Just Work (Gaspereau Press, 2016); a fist made and then un-made (Gaspereau Press, 2013), which was short-listed for the bpNichol Chapbook Award; Against the Hard Angle (ECW Press, 2010); no cage contains a stare that well (ECW Press, 2005); how we play at it: a list (ECW Press, 2002); A Ruckus of Awkward Stacking (Insomniac Press, 2000), which was short-listed for both the Gerald Lampert Award and the ReLit Award for Poetry; and additional chapbooks from Frog Hollow Press (tracery & interplay, 2004) and Greenboathouse Press (against the hard angle, 2009). Robinson has won the Grain Prose Poetry Prize, the Petra Kenney Award, and The Malahat Review Long Poem Prize, among others.
His poems have appeared in a number of anthologies, including The New Canon, Breathing Fire 2, Coastlines: The Poetry of Atlantic Canada, Exact Fare Only 2, Mess: The Hospital Anthology, and Landmarks: An Anthology of New Atlantic Canadian Poetry of the Land; been adapted into cinepoems and short films that have screened at festivals including HIFF and the Atlantic Film Festival; and featured in programs such as Halifax Regional Municipality’s Art in Public Places and Poetry in Motion initiatives.
He works at Saint Mary’s University.
Shelley Thompson is an actor, screenwriter, and activist based in Wolfville, in Mi’kma’ki (NS). She trained at The Royal Academy of Drama.c Art, the Canadian Film Centre, Women in the Directors’ Chair, the New York Writers’ Lab, and the Whistler Producer’s Lab.
As an actor she’s received and been nominated for Gemini and ACTRA awards for her work in film and television, including THE TRAILER PARK BOYS, and feature films SPLINTERS, and THE CHILD REMAINS among others.
Her short films have screened internationally with the most
recent, DUCK DUCK GOOSE, winning Best Atlantic Short at FIN Halifax. It was selected by Telefilm Canada’s Not Short on Talent at Clermont-Ferrand, and was a finalist in CBC’s Short Film Faceoff.
Her first feature film, Dawn, Her Dad & The Tractor premiered at Inside Out Film Festival in Toronto (BFI Flare), screened in Whistler, BC, where it was nominated for the Borsos Prize, and in Halifax. It played across Europe, and won the 2022 Nova Scotia MasterWorks Award.
Thompson is working on a second novel Murmurations. She has TV and cinema projects in development under the banner of her emerging production company, Rusty Tractor Productions Inc which in 2023, produced a documentary series TRANSLATIONS presently on CBC Gem, and Bell Fibe TV1
A committed LGBTQ+2SP ally, Thompson is proud parent to singer/ songwriter T. Thomason, a trans man who inspires her, every day.
ROAR, her first novel, was published by Nimbus/Vagrant Press in Nova Scotia, in October 2023, was nominated for the Margaret and John Savage first novel prize, and won the OLA’s Evergreen prize in 2025.
WINTER SKY, her second book was published by Nimbus/Vagrant in Oct 2025, and in 2026 was nominated for the Alistair MacLeod Prize for Short Fiction.
“It may take time, but dreams can come true.” This speaks to Hui Zhou, a bilingual nonfiction writer with a long career in natural science.
Born, educated, worked, married, became a mother and a respected senior scientist in her home city Beijing, Hui created her next opportunity to Canada. In the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia, she researched in her favourite field, entomology and obtained a Master of Science Degree, dreamed for a long time, from Saint Mary’s University in Halifax.
Still, Hui explores wider in science, but she never stops writing that had been one of her hobbies for most of her life. Since 2016, she has focused more on writing, one more dream come true.
Many of her nonfiction stories have been published in print and heard on radio broadcast since the 1990’s. Her latest publications include, Grandpa Santa, published in The Chronicle Herald and three other Atlantic daily newspapers on a same day, December 3, 2021. It was about how her daughter at six excitedly learned about Christmas in her birth country where Christmas has never been a holiday. Over the SandBar was published by The Masthead News 2025 (October Issue). A Glance at an Old Newspaper, about how Hui “ran into” the history of the Halifax Explosion, was published on Blood & Bourbon Magazine, Issue #15, 2025. It was also named as a Finalist in 2025 Next Generation Short Story Awards.
Running Wild with Bossy Boy (2018) is Hui’s first nonfiction photograph-storybook for children about a flock of free-run backyard chickens, focusing on their different personalities, or to them, chicken-alities. Children can easily understand chicken’s personalities, learn the biology through the interesting stories and imagine how happy the chickens are when running freely.
In Hui’s second nonfiction photograph-storybook, Puppy Oland (2023), children will meet the lively dog Oland and discover what Oland liked at his puppy training, if Oland was a good swimmer, how many corn ears Oland retrieved from neighboring campers, whom Oland once badly offended . . .
The success, in writing, photographing, book design, self-publishing, marketing and much more, encourages Hui’s further works to participate in nonfiction contests or awards.
Hui loves animals, including insects that she has studied and especially now speaking for about their beauty, their irreplaceable importance to the ecosystem and their dramatic population decline because of human activities.
Gardening, a heritage from her grandpa, remains her favorite pastime.
As a novice hiker, Michael was constrained by the limited accurate information available about local trails. During his own explorations he began keeping notes, and sharing his observations with family and friends. With their encouragement, in 1995 he wrote and Goose Lane published Hiking Trails of Nova Scotia (7th Edition), in cooperation with the Canadian Hostelling Association.
Since then, Michael has written ten guides on hiking and biking trails in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Québec, and Ontario. He has been a regular contributor to CBC Radio in Halifax, Sydney and Ottawa. In addition to his books and radio appearances, Haynes has published numerous articles about Canada’s outdoors, both locally and nationally.
Michael has hiked in every province in Canada, numerous states in the U.S., Australia, and several countries in Europe and Asia. He tries to walk every day, but when not hiking, he orienteers, runs, bikes, cross-country skis, and otherwise keeps active.
In addition to writing about trails, Michael also works in trail development and active transportation. He has been a member of the consulting teams that have produced trail plans for communities such as Sault Ste. Marie, Chatham-Kent, and North Grenville, and active transportation/bike plans for Oromocto, Corner Brook, Lunenburg, and Essex County. Michael has also presented at numerous Canadian trail workshops, and at Australian, and American national trail conferences.
He currently resides in Nova Scotia.
The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS) uses the following terms to describe writers’ experience levels:
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
