writers helping writers
John J. Guiney Yallop is a Two-Spirited writer and academic. His writing and research includes poetic inquiry and narrative inquiry. John is interested in stories of lived experience, identities, emotions, communities and gratitude. His most recent book is OUT of Place.
Gwen has been a writer and editor since Justin Trudeau was a babe in arms. Long ago, she published poems and short stories but did not make enough money to eat, let alone drink. She wrote three history books: Once Upon a Mine, For Love of Stone and Gesner’s Dream. Never heard of them? You’re not alone. It took a while, but Gwen finally realized that book royalties would not pay the rent.
She thereafter began a thirty-year career that saw her authoring or editing heavy scientific tomes, lively political speeches, boring government reports and million-dollar grant proposals for clients across Canada. These days, she conducts self-editing workshops for professionals and, as a sideline, writes essays that articulate the life-patterns she sees everywhere. She’s also writing a non-fiction book, The Solace of Stone©, that explores how rocks (which she feels are sentient beings with memories) embody our personal and collective yearning for mystery and transcendence.
Gwen has a B.Sc. from University of Toronto (geology) and diplomas from The Banff Centre (creative writing; arts journalism). Apart from that, her education has come from life: she’s been a ballet school piano player, seamstress, lounge singer, arts journalist, geo-magazine editor, desktop publisher, freight train jumper, prospector, geologist, project manager, executive director for a provincial writers’ federation, geotourism guide, writing/editing workshop facilitator, and science teacher. Gwen is also a professional member with The Writers’ Union of Canada and the Canadian Freelance Guild.
A writer, gay activist and community historian of Acadian and Newfoundland heritage, Robin Metcalfe has published journalism, cultural criticism, short fiction and poetry in international periodicals and anthologies. He won the 2000 Evelyn Richardson Prize for Non-Fiction and was shortlisted for a National Magazine Award in 2004. He lives in Kjipuktuk/Halifax and is Director/Curator of Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery.
Pronouns: he, him
Jeff Miller is the author of Ghost Pine: All Stories True (Invisible Publishing). His stories have appeared in several anthologies and he frequently publishes cultural journalism. A longtime resident of Montreal, he recently moved to the Eastern Shore.
Nina Newington’s first novel, Where Bones Dance, won the Writers’ Guild of Alberta Georges Bugnet Award for Novel in 2008. Guernica Press is publishing her second novel, Cardinal Divide, in September 2020. She is currently finishing a memoir about living illegally in the US for twenty years.
A former Kennedy scholar with an MA in English Literature from Cambridge, she makes her living designing gardens and building things. She is an active member of Extinction Rebellion in Annapolis County. English by birth, she and her American wife immigrated to Canada in 2006. They raise sheep on unceded Mi’kmaw territory near the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia.
Virginia Konchan is the author of the poetry collections Any God Will Do (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2020) and The End of Spectacle (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2018), a collection of short stories, Anatomical Gift (Noctuary Press, 2017), and four chapbooks, That Tree is Mine (Gaspereau Press, 2020), Empire of Dirt (above/ground press, 2019), The New Alphabets (Anstruther Press, 2019), and Vox Populi (Finishing Line Press, 2015). She holds degrees from Beloit College (BA), Cleveland State University (MFA), and the University of Illinois-Chicago (Ph.D). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Best New Poets, The Believer, and The New Republic, her essays and criticism in Kenyon Review Online, Boston Review, Jacket2, and Guernica, her translations in The Brooklyn Rail, Asymptote and Circumference, and her fiction in StoryQuarterly, Joyland, and Memorious, among other places. Her work has been anthologized in several collections, and her honors include grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Vermont Studio Center, Ox-Bow, The Banff Center, and Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice. Co-founder of Matter, a journal of poetry and political commentary, and Associate Editor for Tupelo Quarterly, she currently lives and works in Halifax.
Kayla Hounsell is an award-winning journalist and bestselling author. Her book First Degree: From Med School to Murder: The Story Behind the Shocking Will Sandeson Trial, is a true crime book based on a story she covered as a reporter for years. Published by Nimbus Publishing, it was a finalist for an Atlantic Book Award for Non-fiction writing. Based in Halifax, and originally from Newfoundland, Kayla has also worked in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Ottawa, Rwanda, South Sudan, Liberia and the U.K. First Degree is her first book.
Amy Spurway was born and raised in Cape Breton. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in English from UNB and a degree in Radio and Television Arts from Ryerson University. She lives in Dartmouth with her husband and three daughters.
Davidson Elliott is the award winning author of The Blind Mechanic which is a tribute to her father Eric Davidson, an extraordinary survivor of the Halifax Explosion of December 6, 1917.
From the Annapolis Valley. Travelled across North Amrica, Europe, India, Japan, Cameroon, Tunisia. Bachelor’s of Nordic studies from the Sorbonne in 2016, Master’s in sociology in 2017; year of study in Tromsø, Norway, Study certificate from the University of Vaasa (Fi.), and The Askov Folkehøjskole (DK.).
Started publishing poetry in 2010, has since published poetry, short stories, essays, and theatre in both English and French, in Canada and in Europe. His first three plays were published in Paris in 2016-2017. In 2017, co-directed and co-wrote one film (in Denmark) ; Tallinn, hvor smuk du er. Also a musician and a songwriter, has had the opportunity to play in Canada, France, Germany, Norway, Denmark, India and japan, and has produced a certain number of recordings. He has also been invited as an official poet as certain events, such as one of the official poets of the SNA at the 2019 CMA, in Moncton.
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