Non-fiction (Adult) – Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia

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.

Carolyn Jean Nicholson

Writing historical fiction and non-fiction, including how-to and resources for researching your ancestors and structuring the material into an article or book for family and friends or a wider audience to enjoy.
We all have ancestors. How much do you know about your ancestors and why are they important?

Mark Baker

Rebecca Rose

Rebecca Rose is the author of Before the Parade: A History of Halifax’s Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Communities (1972-1984), published by Nimbus Publishing. Before the Parade is a narrative non-fiction account of some of the people, places, and events that made up the 2SLGB community of 1970s and 80s Halifax/K’jipuktuk. It features over 30 interviews with local 2SLGB elders. Rebecca was shortlisted for The Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award for Before the Parade in 2021.

Rebecca is a sought after speaker and has hosted workshops or given keynote speeches for groups including: The MacPhee Centre For Creative Learning, The Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity, the X School of Journalism, the Canadian Association of Labour Media (CALM), the Nova Scotia Rainbow Action Project, the Nova Scotia Public Interest Research Group (NSPIRG), and the Canadian Union of Public Employees.

A graduate of the X University School of Journalism, Rebecca has written for publications such as: The Coast, Xtra, OurTimes magazine, Rabble.ca, and OUT: Queer Looking, Queer Acting Revisited. In 2018, The Coast named the 2016 article “Before the Parade” – the precursor to the book – one of the 30 most important things they’ve ever published.

Born in Cape Breton and raised in Dartmouth, Rebecca now lives in the hills of Dartmouth with her partner and cat.

Michelle Hébert

One day when Michelle was in Grade 8, her English teacher asked her to stay behind after class. Michelle sat at her desk with her heart pounding in her ears – she was terrified he’d found the smutty note she and her friends had been passing during class. Her teacher closed the door behind the other students, walked back to front of the classroom, and picked some loose-leaf off his desk. His voice (and Michelle’s words) echoed in the empty classroom as he read aloud from an assignment she’d written. He set the paper down, folded his arms, and said, “If you become anything but a writer, it will be a waste.”

Those words have hung over her like a curse since 1985.

Since then, Michelle’s earned a degree in journalism from King’s and a Master of Social Work from Dal. She’s worked across Canada as a freelance journalist, and her writing has appeared in The Coast, Mothering magazine, New Maritimes, and various small-town newspapers. She’s also written and recorded documentaries and audio essays for CBC radio. Sometimes, she’s supported herself by writing prosaic but useful reports for governments and community organizations. Her book Enriched by Catastrophe: Social Work and Social Conflict After the Halifax Explosion was published by Fernwood in 2007. She was a presenting author at Word on the Street in 2009. She really wanted to phone her old English teacher to let him know.

Michelle lives with PTSD. This has slowed her writing progress over the years, but it’s also given her a unique perspective and resilience. She’s recently completed a novel about generational trauma, superstition, and what happens when everything we believe in fails us.

Michelle lives in Halifax with her two teenagers, four cats, and a dog.

Sara Jewell

Author & freelance writer

Licensed lay worship leader, United Church of Canada

Substitute teacher, elementary and secondary

Bachelor of Arts (honours) English and Bachelor of Education from Queen’s University, Kingston, ON

Kelly S Thompson

Kelly S. Thompson is a writer and retired officer in the Canadian Armed Forces. Kelly has a Honours Bachelor degree in Professional Writing from York University, a certificate in Publishing from Ryerson University, a master’s in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia, and is completing a PhD in Literary and Critical Studies, Creative Writing, at the University of Gloucestershire in the UK, where she examines representations of grief and trauma in memoir.

Kelly’s work has won awards in a variety of genres. She won the House of Anansi Press Golden Anniversary Award for Fiction, the 2014 and 2017 Barbara Novak Award for Personal Essay, and was shortlisted for Room magazine’s 2013 and 2014 Creative Nonfiction awards, placing 2nd in the 2019 contest. Her essays have appeared in anthologies across Canada, including Boobs, by Caitlin Press, Embedded on the Home Front, with Heritage House and Everyday Heroes with Simon & Schuster.

Her work has appeared in literary magazines across the country and her professional writing has been printed in Chatelaine, Maclean’s, The Globe and Mail, and more. Her article on military sexual harassment titled “Battle Fatigue,” was runner up for Feature Article of the Year with the Professional Writers Association of Canada.

Her memoir Girls Need Not Apply: Field Notes from the Forces with Penguin Random House Canada, was an instant Globe and Mail bestseller and declared one of the top 100 books of 2019 by the Globe and Mail.

Kelly also teaches writing to all levels, having run after-school writing programs for teenage girls, creative writing classes for children, and taught Creative Writing and Communications at Trent University. She now teaches at the University of King’s Creative Non Fiction. She also developed and runs classes for Royal Roads University and Loyalist College.

Kelly’s next memoir will release with McClelland & Stewart in January, 2023.

Danielle Metcalfe-Chenail

Danielle Metcalfe-Chenail specializes in telling hidden, inclusive histories for audiences of all ages. She’s done this for over a decade as a freelancer as well as through her books, which span adult narrative nonfiction, essays, a picture book.

Danielle has a new picture book forthcoming in 2023, and her first chapter book – Fever on the Forgotten Coast – is out on submission.

Danielle is currently doing rewrites on The 500 Year Flood, a women’s fiction project set during Hurricane Harvey. Over the winter of 2021-22, with the support of a Canada Council Creation Grant, she will return to her creative nonfiction book trauma, family, and the largest Indian Hospital in Canada.

If you’re looking for a sharp-eyed cheerleader to help you with editing and coaching, Danielle will help you through the writing and publishing journey with empathy and encouragement. Please contact her directly to discuss working together.

Elizabeth Glenn-Copeland

I am an author, theatre artist and arts educator with more than four decades of professional experience. As a theatre artist, I have toured with Second City doing improv comedy, played the Witch in Hansel and Gretl with the Honolulu Symphony and told my original stories at the Toronto International Storytelling Festival. My arts education credits include work with Learning Through the Arts, World Vision, and the Storytellers School of Toronto.

I served as Artistic Director of KPH Theater Productions in Miramichi, N.B. from 2012 to 2016, and along with my husband, Beverly Glenn Copeland, completed half a dozen artist residencies* in N.B. schools. I was honoured to serve as Writer-in-Residence* for James M. Hill High School in 2015. (*Funding support through NB Department of Tourism, Heritage and Culture.)

In February 2016 I was part of the faculty at the San Miguel Writers Conference (San Miguel de Allende, Mexico), and led the creative writing workshop at the Knowlton Literary Festival in Knowlton, Quebec in October.

In 2017, I returned to Mount Allison University to indulge myself in two years of full time study of eco-poetry, feminist philosophy, sustainability in education and medieval studies. Thanks to MTA, in the summer of 2017 I completed a residency to research and create a one-act spoken-word play entitled, “Bearing Witness”.

During my tenure as 2018 Writer-in-Residence at Joggins Fossil Institute, I researched and wrote — “Daring to Hope at the Cliff’s Edge: Pangea’s Dream Remembered”: an art/science collaboration and conversation between myself and the three-hundred million year old rock. The theme: how to find what Buddhist eco-philosopher, Joanna Macy calls Active Hope as we stand at this cliff’s edge in our evolution as a species. The book was launched in Sackville, N.B. on Sept. 29, 2019 by Chapel Street Editions.

Due to covid, my cross country tour to promote this book was cancelled, but late 2020 saw a resurgence of interest in the work and its message of hope. I participated in the Writing for Change series launched by The Rose Theater in Brampton, ON. An exciting variation on this theme will be happening virtually on March 21 at The Rose with spoken-word artist extraordinaire, Ian Keteku.

Since moving to Spencers Island in Jan. 2021, I am making new writing and peforming friends and will be part of the Shipwright Sessions (Ships Company Theater) in Aug. 2021.

Jan Fancy Hull

Jan Fancy Hull lives and writes beside (and sometimes on) a quiet lake in Lunenburg County. She was born on Nova Scotia’s Eastern Shore.

She has embarked on writing a series of Tim Brown Mysteries, which are set (so far) on Nova Scotia’s south shore. The first, January: Code, was published in December 2021. February: Curious and March: Enigma will be released in 2022.

Her debut non-fiction book, Where’s Home?, was published in the summer of 2020. Using open-ended questions in a survey, and multiple personal interviews, Jan explored the many ways Nova Scotians experience home, or wish they did. Home is not always as it seems. Or as expected. Or attainable.

Her first book of short stories, The Church of Little Bo Peep and other stories, was launched August 2021. Her second collection, Inquire Within, will be out in 2022.

All books mentioned above are available from the publisher, Moose House Publications.

She has been published in the Chronicle Herald, The Antigonish Review, and three of her poems were included in an anthology, Gathering In, published by Windywood Publishing in October 2020.

Before retiring (from steady paycheques), Jan served in various careers, enterprises, pursuits, and avocations, including as arts administrator, sailing tours skipper, and employee benefits broker. She creates sculptures from Nova Scotian sandstone, is involved in the Lunenburg Art Gallery Society, and writes. She is a Member of the Writers Federation of Nova Scotia Writers’ Council.

She also likes to play golf, and drift on the lake in her small boat.

Facebook: Jan Fancy Hull / Jan Hull Stoneist;

Websites: janfancyhull.ca / thestoneist.com