Illustration

Lauren Soloy

Lauren is the author and illustrator of When Emily was Small and Etty Darwin and the Four Pebble Problem, and The Hidden World of Gnomes, and the illustrator of I’s the B’y and A Tulip in Winter. She has lived on both coasts of Canada, always within reach of the sea. She currently lives in a 140-year-old house in the wilds of Nova Scotia with her librarian husband, two curious children, an ever-expanding collection of books, two hives of bees, and one cat. She has a Visual Arts BFA with Honours from the University of Victoria, and a certificate of Fine Furniture from Camosun College. Along the way, she has learned to make a Queen Anne Highboy, a pottery mug, a hand knit pair of socks, a headstand, and a mess. She is represented by Jackie Kaiser at Westwood Creative Artists.

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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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Kate Macintosh

A Graphic Designer with and English Degree seems like a natural fit for Book Design! I’ve been doing all kinds of Graphic Design since graduating from Art School in 1999, when Mac computers looked like blue spaceships, and the Internet was in diapers.

A native Haligonian, I have clients all across the country through my wee freelance business that has been thriving for a couple of decades now. Trust me when I say, I love this business. I love the sumptuous texture of paper. I kern movie titles. I speak Helvetica fluently. And, though it may not be the stuff of dreams – I can make a killer GRAPH.

Basically, my specialty is the art of visual language.

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Beth Ann Knowles

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.

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Nancy Rose

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.

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Hui Zhou

“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.

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Patrick Woodcock

Patrick Woodcock is the author of 10 books of poetry and countless reviews. His work has been translated and published in 14 languages. Since travel is so essential to his work, Mr. Woodcock has lived and worked in such diverse countries as Iceland, Poland, Russia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, The Sultanate of Oman, Saudi Arabia, Colombia, The Kurdish North of Iraq and Azerbaijan. Within Canada he has travelled from the West to East coasts, as well as working as a volunteer for almost a year with the elders of Fort Good Hope, NT – 20km south of the Arctic Circle. His seventh book Always Die Before Your Mother was shortlisted for Canada’s ReLit award in 2010 and reached the number one spot on the Globe and Mail’s bestseller list. His 8th book Echo Gods and Silent Mountains was extremely well reviewed all over the world and was called “…the most beautiful, deep and touching collection of poetry written on Kurds by a non-Kurd.” by the Kurdish media network, Rudaw. He has read at International poetry festival’s in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Slovenia, the Kurdish North of Iraq, Azerbaijan, England, The Republic of Georgia, Tanzania, Kenya and Canada’s Winnipeg International Writers Festival. While living in Colombia he read at the Ibague Poetry Festival, The XVIII Medellin International Poetry Festival and was the first poet from outside of Latin America to ever read at the Bogota Poetry Festival. Patrick’s ninth book of poetry You can’t bury them all which is set in the Kurdish North of Iraq, Fort Good Hope, NT Canada and Azerbaijan was published by ECW Press in 2016. You can’t bury them all won the Alcuin Society Book Design Award for Poetry and was shortlisted for the JM Abraham Poetry Award in 2017. After living for two years in Tanzania as a volunteer at Baraa Primary School, Arusha, Patrick moved to the hamlet of Paulatuk in the Inuvik region of the Northwest Territories to work while completing his new manuscript Farhang Book I which was published by ECW Press, Toronto, Canada, September 5th 2023 and called by CBC Books one of Canada’s must reads in 2023. The album “Bill Pritchard Sings Poems By Patrick Woodcock” was released by Tapete records May 5th, 2023. He now lives in between Iqaluit, Nunavut and Toronto Ontario where he is the Regional Instructor/ Coordinator for United for Literacy. In September 2024 he was awarded the 2024 Council of the Federation Award in recognition of his outstanding achievement in literacy from the Premier of Nunavut, The Honourable P.J. Akeeagok. Farhang Book II will be published by ECW Press in 2026 along with his first collection of short stories entitled Animare (Tidewater Press, 2026).

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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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Kate Inglis

KATE INGLIS is an author living on the south shore of Nova Scotia. Her fourth book, Notes for the Everlost: A Field Guide to Grief won the Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Literary Award. She also writes children’s fiction, including award-nominated novels — her fifth and most recent picture book, A Great Big Night was awarded a Kirkus star and was nominated for the national David Booth Children’s and Youth Poetry Award. Kate’s work has been featured in poetry anthologies, and she also co-authored a best-selling book on the craft of photography.

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Doretta Groenendyk

Doretta graduated from NSCAD with a BA in Art Education. She then worked in Swaziland, Africa for a year and then Igloolik, Nunavut for another two. Before and after these diverse experiences, she was an avid traveller and tree planter.

Once settled in Nova Scotia, Doretta worked as an artist in classrooms through AVRSB, the program Arts Infusion, the Paints program, and as a volunteer. Her paintings are represented by the Harvest Gallery in Wolfville, Details Gallery in Charlottetown, and Art Sales and Rentals at the AGNS in Halifax.

Doretta has illustrated 5 children’s picture books, including Fiddles and Spoons (Dery Publishing Group) and Bounce, Beans and Burn (Acorn Press). She is the author and illustrator of I’m Writing a Story and Snow for Christmas (Acorn Press). Her 6th book, Thank You For My Bed, was published in Fall 2011.

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