Genre

Bruce W. Bishop

Bruce Bishop, originally from Yarmouth, N.S., has been writing professionally since the mid-1990s, primarily for travel, tourism and leisure freelance markets. He has written and contributed to several guidebook companies over the years, especially Fodor’s, Michelin, and DK Eyewitness Guides. From 2000 to 2002, he was the elected president of the Travel Media Association of Canada.

In 2020 at the outset of the pandemic, he began writing fiction for the first time, and his debut novel Unconventional Daughters (Icarus Press) was published the same year. Based on its popular appeal, he chose to embark upon writing a trilogy, and the second novel, Uncommon Sons, was released in 2021. The final novel in the trilogy, Undeniable Relations was published in 2022.

The coming-of-age Grow up, Rory Rafferty, set in 1979 Toronto, was published in 2024. Its follow-up, Stephanie Makes a Scene, was released in May 2026. All his books are published in affiliation with Icarus Press Publishing in Fredericton, N.B.

He was one of five authors selected to read from Undeniable Relations at the Read by the Sea annual literary festival in July 2023.

Bishop is also a member of the Writers Union of Canada.

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Sarah Sweeney

Sarah Sweeney was always a writer, but her big chance came while she was a teacher working in Istanbul, Turkey. She became frustrated that she didn’t have the right kinds of books to help her students learn English, so she started making her own materials. After a bit of pushing from a colleague she started working with a publisher, and they brainstormed what kinds of books were needed and how they could make them. Sarah is not just an author but also has illustrated many of her books. She has written 20 books with Turkish publishers Redhouse Kidz and Fono Publishing. She also taught herself digital artwork in order to illustrate two of her books

Sarah has since moved back to her home province of Nova Scotia, and continues to write. Since she will always be a teacher at heart, she teaches as a substitute in the nearby elementary schools and junior high. She is often inspired by the students she meets in all the different classrooms she gets to teach in.

Sarah traded in the city, for a little house by the sea, surrounded by trees. She lives there with her husband and two young daughters.

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Brittni Brinn

Brittni Brinn (she/they) writes science fiction and horror from a tower in Kjipuktuk/Halifax. She graduated with an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Windsor and worked in community theatre for a few years before moving to the East Coast.

Her debut novel, The Patch Project, was published by EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing (2018). A revised edition and the two sequels in the post-apocalyptic trilogy followed from Adventure Worlds Press, most recently collected in The Patch Project: The Complete Omnibus edition (2025). Their weird novella Misplaced (2024) is currently available from Little Ghosts Books.

Brittni’s short stories appear in anthologies with Eibonvale Press, Little Ghosts Books, and Undertaker Books. Excerpts from their ongoing novel projects were featured in WFNS’s Hal-Con zines (2024, 2025).

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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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Michelle Robinson

Michelle Robinson is the bestselling author of over 50 children’s books including ‘The World Made a Rainbow’, ‘She Rex’, ‘There’s a Lion in my Cornflakes’, ‘A Beginner’s Guide to Bearspotting’, ‘Red Lorry, Yellow Lorry’, the ‘Goodnight Spaceman’ series and many, many more. Her books are published all over the world and feature in Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library and the BookTrust Book Start scheme.

Michelle moved to Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia from England in 2021. She is a hugely popular author in the UK, where she spent over a decade regularly performing in schools, libraries and at literary festivals. She loves visiting schools and is passionate about nurturing a love of literacy through encouraging reading and writing for pleasure.

“The kids got so much out of it – and the staff were buzzing, too!”
– Heronswood Primary School

“Thank you SO much for an amazing, interactive, exciting and inspiring morning. We LOVED it!”
– St Pius-X Catholic Primary School

“All the children and staff thought you were just beyond AMAZING.
They couldn’t believe what a fantastic experience it was. You are the best author we have ever had! THANK YOU so much!”
– Woodbank Primary School

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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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Joanne Gallant

Joanne Gallant is a writer and registered nurse living in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Her debut book, A Womb in the Shape of a Heart: My Story of Miscarriage and Motherhood (Nimbus Publishing, 2021) was nominated for the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award. She’s had essays published in ‘Mutha Magazine’ (2021) and ‘Oh Reader Magazine’ (2021), and her book reviews have been featured in The Miramichi Reader.

Joanne was raised in Fall River, Nova Scotia by her parents, both schoolteachers, who created a home-life centered around curiosity and storytelling. Her father, a Guyanese immigrant, often shared memories from his childhood to Joanne and her siblings. He told stories about wild turtles and monkeys roaming the streets of Georgetown, and days spent eating stalks of sugarcane plucked from the side of the road. Joanne’s mother, an English teacher, made regular trips to the library where she could find the perfect book for anyone. A deeply creative person, she often crafted poems to make her family laugh and made beautiful paintings as gifts.

Joanne obtained a Biology degree from Mount Allison University in 2008 and a Nursing degree from the University of Alberta in 2011. She has been working as a registered nurse at the IWK Health Centre since 2012 and her work as a pediatric nurse continues to be challenging, fulfilling, and her experiences as a nurse teaches her so much about life.

Although Joanne went into nursing as her profession, she has always been a writer working on stories and poems that she mostly kept to herself. She kept a diary from the time she was nine years old until she was an adult, and writing has always been a way for her to process anything she was struggling with. Following a difficult journey to motherhood, having endured multiple miscarriages, Joanne turned to the familiar comfort of writing to cope with the grief and loss she experienced. It was these pages of writing that would later turn into her debut book. Since she began writing her story, Joanne has spoken about miscarriages on TV and radio interviews, podcasts, and online, hoping to give voice to others who may also struggling and to normalize the conversation about disenfranchised grief.

Joanne was an apprentice writer in the 2020 Alistair MacLeod Mentorship Program and worked under the guidance of author and poet Carole Glasser Langille. She’s participated in workshops led by local writers including Stephanie Domet and Michelle Butler Hallett, and is always looking for ways to connect with the Atlantic Canada writing community. Some of her favourite books from local authors published in the last year include The Sister’s Tale by Beth Powning, Beneath Her Skin by C.S. Porter, and Alexander MacLeod’s latest collection, Animal Person.

Joanne has recently taken up sewing with her grandmother’s antique sewing machine and each spring she tries in vain to grow tomatoes from seed. She lives near the ocean with her husband, their five-year-old-son, and spirited dog, Maddy.

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Luke Hathaway

Luke Hathaway is a trans poet, librettist, and performer who lives in Kjipuktuk/Halifax, and teaches full time at Saint Mary’s University. His mythopoeic word-worlds have given rise to new musical and/or theatrical works by composers Colin Labadie, Benton Roark, Zachary Wadsworth, and James Rolfe, as well as by DaPoPo Theatre. His books have been recognized on ‘Best of’ lists in New York Times, the Times (U.K.), The National Post, and the Globe and Mail, as well as on NPR and the CBC. He frequently collaborates with singer/scholar Daniel Cabena as part of the metamorphosing ensemble ANIMA (animaearlymusic.com).

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