Genre

Paul W Bennett

Paul W. Bennett, Ed.D. (OISE/Toronto) is a Halifax author, professor, and commentator. He is the author of ten books, most recently The State of the System: A Reality Check on Canada’s Schools (2020). He’s an education columnist for Saltwire Network and Brunswick News and a regular contributor to The National Post, The Globe and Mail, and Post Media regional papers across Canada. His book reviews appear regularly in The Literary Review of Canada.

Paul is founding Director of Schoolhouse Institute, and Adjunct Professor of Education at Saint Mary’s University. Over a career spanning four decades in three different provinces, Ontario, Quebec, and Nova Scotia, Dr. Bennett has written or co-authored ten b ooks, sixteen major education policy studies, and dozens of articles in both the popular media and the academic press.

Dr. Bennett is a widely recognized leader and commentator in Canadian education. From 1997 until 2009, Paul served as Headmaster of two of Canada’s leading independent coeducational day schools, Halifax Grammar School and Lower Canada College. Since 20009, he’s devoted his time and energy to the cause of public education reform. His Blog, Educhatter, was honoured as the Top Education Blog in Canada in 2018 and 2022.

Paul is also a public-spirited and active citizen. He served as Chair of the Board of the Halifax Public Libraries (2010-17) and guided the development and opening of Halifax Central Library. From 2011 to 2016, he served as President of the Halifax Branch of the Canadian International Council, then as Board Chair at Churchill Academy in Dartmouth (2016-2022). For the past six years, he’s been National Coordinator of researchED Canada, guiding its development from coast-to-coast.

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Laura Best

Laura lives in East Dalhousie, Nova Scotia with her husband, Brian. A member of the Parkdale/Maplewood Museum Society, Laura has a strong interest in local history, and participates in the school group program at the museum. At the age of ten, she wrote her first play and she’s been writing ever since. She is also a member of CANSCAIP.

Laura’s first young adult novel, Bitter, Sweet, was published in 2009 and was short listed for the Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Young People. It also made the “Best Books for Kids and Teen 2011” list. Her middle grade novel, “Flying With a Broken Wing,” was name one of Bank Street College of Educations Best Books for 2015. Her book “Cammie takes Flight” was nominated for a 2018 Silver Birch Award and made the Best Books for Kids and Teens 2018 list. In 2020, Laura’s first novel for adults,“Good Mothers Don’t” was published.

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Jenni Blackmore

A new season just beginning! Definitely time to upgrade my bio; even though some things never change life’s experience continually morphs and expands. Have to love that 🙂

Part of me is still the kid from Manchester, England, who always wanted to be a writer, a painter and a farmer, living by the ocean, and much to my amazement, here I am, living my dream on a small island just east of Halifax. Of course I’m greatly influenced by the coastal environment and references to this locale have a way of sneaking into most of my work. I love my reality but I usually can’t resist adding a twist or two of magic to my work, especially my favorite genres of poetry, adult short fiction and childrens fiction.

As an illustrator and writer, I like to combine both these forms of expression, especially in my books for children. Recently, however the denizens of QuackaDoodle Farm, who take up a fair amount of my attention, have been demanding their space on the page and this has resulted in, Permaculture for the Rest of Us (New Society Publishing) a factual account of life here at QuackaDoodle, my blog site QuackaDoodle.Wordpress.com and occassional posts on the Mother Earth News Site.

My latest book The Foodlovers’ Garden (New Society) is scheduled for release May 2017 and I was delighted to be able to illustrate this with thirty+ illustrations and forty digital images, all celebrating the wonders of homegrown food. Yum! And oh so colourful.

The second edition of Gully Goes to Halifax flew into my life recently. The story remains mostly unchanged but this edition has twice the page size and all the illustrations are in full colour, so I’m delighted about that.

I believe everyone is writer at heart because of course we all have things to say, ideas to share. This is one of the reasons why I particularly enjoy leading writing workshops for both children and adults but mostly, it’s about the stories that get shared. Surely story is the thread that binds us all together while, equally importantly, poetry tends to magnify and perhaps suggest a new way of seeing both the mundane and the magical.

Please visit me at: Quackadoodle.wordpress.com for sporadic but ongoing news of life down here on the farm

Jenni has been mentioned in “Our Choice Book List” and “Outstanding Canadian Children’s Books” by the Children’s Book Centre, Toronto. Her recent novel Island of Dead Souls came first in the Atlantic Writing competition YA category.

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Søren Bondrup-Nielsen

Søren Bondrup-Nielsen was born in Denmark, but at the age of 13 his family immigrated to Canada. After a year in Toronto they moved into the country, and as a teenager, Søren spent as much time as he could outdoors. His outdoor interests eventually led to a PhD in Zoology from the University of Alberta. Søren moved to Nova Scotia in 1989 where he joined the Biology Department at Acadia University, teaching Ecology and Conservation Biology.

Søren is passionate about the outdoors and how we humans relate to nature. With many scientific articles and edited books dealing with ecology and conservation, Søren tackled writing for the general public with the publication of “Winter on Diamond: An encounter with the Temagami Wilderness”, which was published through Res Telluris in December 2004. In 2008 Gaspereau Press published Winter Nature. Common Mammals, Birds, Trees and Shrubs of the Maritimes. In 2009 Gaspereau Press published Søren’s third book A Sound Like Water Dripping: In Search of the Boreal Owl.

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Don Aker

A former high school teacher, literacy mentor, and university instructor, Don Aker fell into writing in 1988 after attending the Martha’s Vineyard Summer Writing Workshops, where instructors encouraged participants to write with their students. Encouraged by winning the short fiction and nonfiction categories of the 1989 and 1990 WFNS Atlantic Writing Competitions as well as Canadian Living’s 1990 National Literary Competition, Don went on to publish numerous stories and articles and has written more than 20 books.

Because he taught hundreds of teenagers during his teaching career, it isn’t surprising that young adults are the focus of most of his work. What subjects does he choose to write about? “Things that bother me, that don’t go away,” he says. For example, Don wrote his first novel after a student shared with him that she was being physically abused by her father. Of Things Not Seen tells the story of sixteen-year-old Ben Corbett, who, along with his mother, is physically abused by his domineering stepfather. Besides domestic violence, Don’s novels have focused on peer pressure, bullying, youth crime, suicide, sexuality, teen gambling, and a variety of other social issues. However, he is quick to point out that the strongest stories are never about issues or events–“They’re about how characters are affected by those issues and events.”

Don holds a Master of Education from Acadia University and, besides working as an educator and writer, he has been a freelance reviewer and consultant for various educational publishers, including Nelson Education, Pembroke Publishers, and Pearson Education. He has written several books for classroom use, among them Hitting the Mark: Assessment Tools for Teachers (Pembroke, 1995) and a series of language arts texts for grades 8 to 11 (Nelson Education), and he has had articles and fiction published in The International Journal of Reading, Quill & Quire, Books in Canada, Canadian Living, The Toronto Star, Our Family Magazine, The Pottersfield Portfolio, Dandelion Magazine, The Chronicle Herald, and various anthologies.

The father of two daughters, Don lives with his wife in Bedford.

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Blanca Baquero

Blanca Baquero’s origins are Spanish and French. Born in Chicago in 1944 and raised in New York, her family moved to Canada in 1959, making Montreal their new home.

Blanca has been writing for the past fifteen years. Her poetry has been published (in both the English and French languages) in a number of literary magazines, university works, and anthologies in Canada and in the United States. In 2001, the Canadian Authors Association chose two of her poems (Repletus and Child’s Play) to be published in their anthology. In 2001 she was the winner of the literary contest organized by the Salon du Livre de la Côte Nord in the province of Quebec.

For the past seven years the poet has been studying a Japanese form of poetry known as Haïku. In 2002, 2004, and 2005 several of her haïkus were published in Quebec by Les Éditions David of Ottawa. Additional highlights include: honourable mention in the Betty Drevniok Award 2005 organized by Haïku Canada; the publication of two of her haïku in Belgium in 2006; and third place winner in a haïku contest organized in Paris, France by l’Association française haïku.

Blanca is a member of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia, The Quebec Writers’ Federation, the League of Canadian Poets, Haïku Canada, Haïku Society of America, and the Association Française de haïku (France).

The writer moved to Nova Scotia in November 2002 and lives on the North Mountain near Canning where she is continually inspired by the pastoral beauty of the Annapolis Valley for her poetry and haïku.

Née à Chicago d’une mère québécoise et d’un père espagnol, Blanca Baquero réside au Canada depuis 1958. Poète anglophone depuis quinze ans, plusieurs de ses poèmes ont été publiés dans des revues littéraires, des anthologies, et des ouvrages universitaires.

En 1997, elle est déménagée à Sept-Iles au Québec. Déterminée à s’intégrer à la population francophone, elle s’est jointe à des ateliers d’écriture en français. Grâce à ces ateliers, elle est tombée amoureuse du haïku. En 2002, 2004 et 2005, elle été publiée par Les Éditions David d’Ottawa dans les recueils dirigé par Francine Chicoine intitulés Dire le nord, Dire la faune et Dire la flore. Haïku Canada lui a décerné une mention honorable dans le concours Betty Drevniok 2005. En 2007, elle a gagné le troisième prix du concours organisé à Paris par l’Association française de haïku.

Blanca Baquero est membre de la Nova Scotia Writers Federation, de la League of Canadian Poets, de la Quebec Writers Federation, de Haïku Canada, de la Haïku Society of America et de l’Association française de haïku en France. Elle habite en Nouvelle-Écosse depuis 2002. Écrire est pour elle un joyeux délire ainsi qu’une véritable aventure.

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Tom Ryan

Tom Ryan is an internationally best selling, award winning author, screenwriter and producer. His adult mystery debut THE TREASURE HUNTERS CLUB (2024) was an instant USA Today, Globe & Mail, and Toronto Star bestseller and a 2025 Edgar Award nominee. His YA mystery KEEP THIS TO YOURSELF (2019) was the winner of the 2020 ITW Thriller Award for Best YA Thriller, the 2020 Arthur Ellis Award for Best YA Crime Book, and the 2021 Ann Connor Brimer Award. His followup YA mystery I HOPE YOU’RE LISTENING (2020) was the winner of the 2021 Lambda “Lammy” Award for Best LGBTQ Mystery. Tom’s latest novel, WE HAD A HUNCH, was released in October 2025.

For more information, visit www.tomryanauthor.com

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Kenneth Michael Davidson

Kenneth Davidson is a curriculum writer for the Nova Scotia Department of Education, Acadia University, and Nova Scotia Community College. Ken has decades of teaching experience at all grade levels in both Nova Scotia and Manitoba. He has also taught for many years at the university and college level. His pedagogical methods have been widely accepted and refined over the years to culminate, through the writing of The Elf Child, in a desire to appeal to the beautiful minds of young children.

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Anne Carter

Picture Books, MG Non-Fiction and Fiction, YA fiction.

Anne divides her time writing and teaching between Toronto Island and the LaHave River, Nova Scotia.

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Judith Meyrick

Judith’s writing has appeared in various publications in both Canada and New Zealand. Her articles and essays appear in the NZ Listener, the NZ Woman’s Weekly, Pandora Publishing, The Avondale Press, Atlantic Books Today, the Landscape Architectural Review and the Canadian History Association magazine. For about three years, she wrote a book review column for the Halifax Herald which are collected here at reviewbites2.blogspot.com. Her children’s book, Gracie the Public Gardens Duck (Nimbus 2007), won Best Published Book and Best Illustrated Book at the Atlantic Book Awards. Most recently, she wrote an essay which appears in Dwelling on the Margins of History (Bloomsbury, 2025).

She returned to university in 2019, graduating in 2023 with an Honours BA and, in 2024, with a master’s, both in history. Her master’s thesis researched a little acknowledged 1911 amendment to the Indian Act.

She is currently researching and writing a non-fiction book which links Scotland, Nova Scotia and New Zealand in a fascinating history of migration and adventure. After university, she moved to Ottawa to be near her daughter and grandchildren.

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