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!
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 fee of course as I still teach. 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: 25 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 17 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 & Now Piloting…(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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia is based in Kjipuktuk, in Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq People. This territory is covered by the “Treaties of Peace and Friendship,” which Mi’kmaq and Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) Peoples first signed with the British Crown in 1725. The treaties do not deal with surrender of lands and resources but in fact recognize Mi’kmaq and Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) title and establish the rules for an ongoing relationship between nations.
© Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia, 2023. All rights reserved.
The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS) recommends that each workshop’s participants share a level or range of writing / publication experience. This is to ensure that each participant gets value from the workshop and is presented with information, strategies, and skills that suit their current writing priorities.
To this end, the “Recommended experience level” section of each workshop description refers to the following definitions developed by WFNS:
For “intensive” and “masterclass” creative writing workshops, which provide more opportunities for participant-to-participant feedback, the recommended experience level should be followed.
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 you’re uncertain of your experience level with regard to any particular workshop, please feel free to contact us at communications@writers.ns.ca
