Adult

Jessica Joy Hiemstra

Jessica Joy Hiemstra is a visual artist, writer and designer living in Gunning Cove, Shelburne County, Mi’kma’ki. When she’s not gardening or writing, she’s drawing. She especially loves to make hand-drawn animations. At the moment she’s making drawings to accompany 41 short poems from writers across the country. These poems, edited by herself and Gillian Sze, will be published by Baseline Press in 2027. A book of essays, written in conversation with the art of Claire Wilks, is expected with Exile Editions in 2026. On the back of that book it says: don’t tell me I cannot love.

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Katie Arthur

Katie Arthur is the author and illustrator of Our Woolly Bear (Owlkids Books, 2024) and What if Marty Doesn’t Like My Party? (Owlkids Books, 2025). Katie holds an MA in English Literature & Creative Writing from Concordia University and is also a graduate of the Humber School for Writers. Her work has received support from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada, and her adult fiction has been longlisted twice for the CBC Short Story Prize. Born and raised in the suburbs of Southern Ontario, Katie now lives with her family on the rocky shores of Northeastern Nova Scotia.

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Judie Oron

Judie Oron is a Canadian/Israeli journalist and award-winning author. Born in Montreal, she lived and worked in Israel for nearly 4 decades and now lives in Halifax, NS. After completing her BA in Anthropology at McGill University and academic research in African Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, she worked as a feature writer at The Jerusalem Post, including a 4-year stint as a weekly columnist. Her articles have appeared in Lifestyles Magazine, The Canadian Jewish News, Weekly Press Pakistan, The Jerusalem Report, Hawarya Canadian/Ethiopian Press, and the Australian editions of Christian Woman, Christian Daily.

Judie left the newspaper to recruit and direct an unofficial rescue unit that assisted Jews to find their way from Ethiopia to Israel. During that period, she returned to war-torn Ethiopia to search for a missing Ethiopian Jewish slave named Wuditu. She located the child, released her from captivity and took her into her family. Cry of the Giraffe tells the story of Wuditu’s 4 years in slavery.

“I paid cash and was handed a human being,” Judie explains, “that experience changed my life.” Since publication, Judie has been speaking out about child slavery, bride kidnapping and obstetric fistula in 2 languages and on 3 continents, in hopes of driving these tragic circumstances onto a wider public consciousness. “Wuditu was trapped into a form of slavery we would call debt bondage,” Judie reports. “My current novel in progress is focussed on another form of child slavery that is also wide-spread in Ethiopia, bride kidnapping.”

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Lynette Richards

Lynette Richards has been cartooning as long as she can remember, and recently published her first graphic novel Call Me Bill (Conundrum Press 2022). She is a Craft Nova Scotia Master Artisan, who lives and works in Terence Bay NS, where she operates her business Rose Window Stained Glass. She chose Stained Glass as her professional medium because it was both a trade and an art that has used sequential narration for over 1000 years!

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Briana Corr Scott

Briana was born in Salem Massachusetts in 1981.

She made her first picture book in 1988 for a contest, at the age of seven. Her incredible first grade teacher, Mrs. Chronholm, noticed how much she loved to draw and write and encouraged her to enter the contest. Although Briana did not win, she experienced a process that has stayed with her into adulthood.

In 2013, Briana reconnected with this childhood dream while drawing with her children at the kitchen table. She had been working as a fine artist since her graduation from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2005. As the primary care giver for her growing family, she felt an increased constraint on the time she had to make her large still life oil paintings. This frustration, combined with two bouts of postpartum depression, landed her in a deep artist’s block in 2010.

In 2013, something shifted. She drew a paper doll and cut it out for her daughter to play with. This simple activity created a joy that changed the course of her life. Briana felt a reconnection with her inner child, which ignited a new energy to create and share work that was inspired by her own childhood memories. Artful play, living close to the sea and in the woods, and re-imagining fairy tales became source material for her projects. Briana started this new path by making illustrations inspired by these childhood experiences, and vowed to follow her curiosity without question from then on. She broke her three year artist’s block when she created paper dolls as art kits, and she has been designing and selling them for a decade.

Through the years, the paper dolls turned into characters for picture books, as well as puppets for stop motion animations.

Following her curiosity without question led Briana to Sable Island, which became the subject of her first paper doll picture book published by Nimbus Publishing in 2018. Since then, Briana has relied on the ideas of play and curiosity to explore other themes, and she has created the images and words for eight books with Nimbus Publishing in a short five years.

Her stop motion animation titled “The Happy Island,” combined her words, paper doll puppets, and oil painted landscapes to tell the story of how she creates her art in her new found “happy place” and was screened at the Lunenunburg Doc Fest in 2021. Her short animation called “Little Islands,” soothed the souls of lonely children after being featured on CBC during the Covid 19 pandemic. She has retold the story of Thumbelina in her picture book “Wildflower,” illustrated mermaid babies in her board book “Mermaid Lullaby,” and reimagined the “Twelve Days of Christmas.” The repeating patterns of her paper doll’s clothing and the endpapers of her books have become a line of wallpaper. Her second picture book titled “The Book of Selkie”, was short listed for the David Booth Poetry prize for Children in 2022.

Briana has shown her work in solo and group shows in Halifax and Boston, and her illustrations have appeared internationally in online features, films and magazines. As wonderful as all this is, the best place to find her is in her happy place, wandering the shore with her paints, writing stories by the sea.

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Francene Gillis

Welcome to my profile. I am who I am, or am I… a paradoxical enquiry worth pondering. “What is most personal is most universal,” –Alistair MacLeod, yet another truth. And the mosaic—picking up pieces and putting them back together again into people who are stronger and better than before—those are the fulcrums, the wheels, and philosophies that drive my writing. I hope you will find information of interest that leads to a partnership or invitation. In brief…I am looking for publishers, freelance writing projects, possible editing depending on genre, and educational and human-interest writing for a fair fee of course as I am now retired, not through choice but injury. That you can read about in my upcoming memoir plus published by OC Publishing this June 22, 2025. Lots more on that on my Facebook page, instagram and soon to be website. I love writing and have been doing so since the tender age of 14. My first poem written at 16 was dedicated to my nine-year-old brother who drowned below our house. I am a professional writer living in Cape Breton, and I am working on several writing projects with the hope of being published in a much bigger circle. Following are highlights of my career thus far: Columnist: 30 plus years with a weekly newspaper: The Inverness Oran; Author: A Rose In November, collection of human interest stories, (1994); English teacher and Educator: 30 plus years, high school for the last 23 and as a substitute prior, while working in adult education and literacy; Masters in Education: Multicultural Diversity, Administration & Leadership, St. Francis Xavier University, 2013; Tribes Trained & Piloted …(2013–2015) Program created by Dr. Jeanne Gibbs, 2006 to help educational institutions and businesses become more successful; Winner of several national, regional writing and educational awards; Reviewer Pearson Canada of educational materials designed for grade nine students; Freelance Editor of several weekly and monthly rural magazines; Worked on several Nova Scotia Department of Education committees…Literacy Success 11 & 12, Advanced English 12 Pilot, Provincial Advisory Board, Grade 12 Provincial Exam; Presenter: Numerous conferences through Literacy, Adult Education, and Public School System such as ATENS Conference 2013, Strait Regional Inservices, Provincial Literacy Conferences; Consultant: (1994–1997) through my own business prior to coming back into the public education system, specializing in education, literacy, editing, and writing; Worked with CCLOW (Canadian Congress Learning Opportunities for Women) writing a chapter in a collective resource for female adult learners across Canada on issues such as self-esteem, confidence, motivation, and upgrading; Mentored by author Alistair MacLeod; I am presently working on a war book that tells the story of four brothers who fought in the Second World War from the time they were boys in rural Canada their struggles after enlisting as boys who become soldiers, and men, and which unlike other war books follows them to their deathbed whether in the war or after. The stories are funny, and serious, and devastating, and deal with battles on and off the frontlines. Called Momma Cried, it will be published this fall by Cape Breton Soul Food Publishing. I also have a fictional manuscript that evolved from true feature stories with men who were sexually abused called Truth Be Told looking for a home and publication in 2026. It is necessary for those silenced too long to be heard. It carries and awareness and educational piece that needs coverage. I also have collections of short stories, educational materials for high school students and teachers, a collection of poems, and several book length manuscripts. I would very much like to work with other professional writers or editors, and to fine a reputable agent for my writing. I would like to branch out as a columnist for human-interest or educational magazines. I guess now that I’m feeling better I wanna do everything because for eight years I could not until I found the right therapies and support and education, thus the memoir where did I go coming out in June. My intent, my hope with all of these books is to be a voice for those silenced too long because of invisible injuries, being different, and those who are called to step up to the plate and be courageous when they are anything those but. Please check me out on my other social platforms. Take care, Francene Gillis

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Dr. George Burden

Dr. George Burden has had an active twenty five year career as a freelance writer, with a focus on travel, but with publications encompassing the gamut of medical-history, human interest, humour, poetry and fiction.

George has placed articles with markets as diverse as The Readers Digest, The Halifax Sunday Herald, The Medical Post, Funny Times, The Writer and Just For Canadian Doctors, among many others.

His adventures have taken him to the shores of all seven continents and into the waters of all five oceans. He has ventured from shipwrecks in the depths of the Atlantic to the cockpit of an airborne F-18 fighter jet, from the crater of an active Antarctic volcano to a private audience with the King of the Ashanti at his palace in Kumasi.

Dr. Burden is a past recipient of the Governor General’s Medal. He has served with the venerable Explorers Club as regional chairman for Quebec/Atlantic provinces and in the role of Director at Large for the organization. George became a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society in 2012. In 2014 George succeeded his father as the 31st Baron of Seabegs (Seybeggis-traditional), Stirlingshire, Scotland. He is currently an associate member of the Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs in Edinburgh as well as the Canadian Commissioner for the Scottish Clan Lamont.

George published his first book, Amazing Medical Stories, co-authored with Dorothy Grant, in May of 2003 with Goose Lane Editions. He was also the recipient of the Travel Media Association of Canada’s:

Choice Hotels Award of Excellence for Best Canadian Story-2005

Days Inn Canadian Family Travel Writing Award-2007

He won 3 awards at the 2010 North American Travel Journalism Awards.

Gold – Category 143: Resorts – “Chilling Out at Quebec City’s Le Chateau Entente”
(Published at Life As A Human on July 30th, 2010)

Silver – Category 128: Intergenerational and Family Travel – “Princess for a Day”
(Published at The Medical Post, April 6, 2010 Issue)

Bronze – Category 150: Cultural, Educational, Self-Improvement Travel – “Having a Ball, Vienna Style”
(Published at Life As A Human on June 12th, 2010)

At present his interest is focused on producing articles for the travel and adventure market.

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Geoff Butler

Geoff Butler is a painter, writer and book illustrator. He was born on Fogo Island, Nfld., near Brimstone Head which has been designated by the Flat Earth Society as one of the four corners of the earth.

Geoff practices his art daily so as not to fall over the edge. He has self-published five books: Art of War: Painting it out of the Picture (1990); The Look of Angels: Angels in Art (2004), a collection of poems, songs, stories, paintings and drawings; and With Every Breath We Take (2007), a modern fable in which a snowflake helps put an end to war; Our Own Little World: in paintings and verse (2013); and One Swallow Makes a Summer Meal: allegories in paintings and verse (2016). Every now and then, he strolls down Alphabet Soup Road to write and illustrate children’s books.

He is a graduate of Memorial University of Newfoundland and Syracuse University. He also studied at the Art Students’ League in New York City. His paintings have been exhibited at, and toured by, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. He has been a visual arts recipient of a Nova Scotia Arts Council Creation grant and a Canada Council Established Artist grant. In 2006, he was elected a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. He lives in the small village of Granville Ferry, N.S.

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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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Emma FitzGerald

Emma FitzGerald was born in Southern Africa to Irish parents and grew up in Vancouver. She has studied both art and architecture, and is the author of Hand Drawn Halifax. She has also illustrated numerous children’s books; EveryBody is Different on EveryBody Street by Sheree Fitch, A Pocket of Time by Rita Wilson, City Streets are for People by Andrea Curtis, and Two Crows by Susan Vande Griek. She lives and draws in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.

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