Nonfiction (adult)

Paul MacDougall

Paul is the author of Distinction Earned, (2011) published by Cape Breton University Press. Paul researched the boxing era in Cape Breton and collected dozens of interviews from participants, enthusiasts and their heirs. The book’s title is taken from a citation of Cape Breton boxers at a Canadian Boxing Hall of Fame investiture in 1987. It was a Nova Scotia best selling book for five months.

In 2019 he worked with documentary film director Charles Currie to make a film based on his book, “Distinction Earned, Cape Breton Boxing’s Golden Era” which was shown at numerous venues, on Eastlink TV and can now be found on YouTube.

Paul also writes short fiction, book reviews, newspaper and magazine articles and one-act plays. He has four plays and co-written three plays all of which were originally produced at the Elizabeth Boardmore One Act Play Festival and five have won the Boardmore Prize for Best Original Script. His three most recent plays are The Venetian Gardens (2013), Wraslin (2015) and Solstice (2018).

In 2020 he completed writing the script for Donair, the Musical with songs and music by Duncan Wells. It was released as a 78 minute audio in December 2021 and hopefully will find a home on stage in the summer of 2022 (CoVID permitting) in Sydney and Halifax.

He conducts outdoor writing workshops in unique locations, and in local high schools, taught a number of introductory non-credit writers’ class at Cape Breton University, has organized a book club for the CBU Seniors College, and was a member of the local CBC radio book panel for a number of years.

He writes a monthy column for the Cape Breton Post entitled “The Sporting Life” and is the host of “The Good Sentence” an almost weekly radio program on “Dialogue” on The Coast 89.7 FM (Bell FibreOp station 773 and streaming online) in which he interviews local authors and arts community members about their recent works.

He also gives lectures and presentations on his work to interested groups.

Paul is a registered microbiologist and a Senior Instructor in the Health Sciences Department at Cape Breton University.

WRITING AWARDS

Geist Magazine Time Zones short story writing contest. Made short list. 2015

The Venetian Gardens (play) Boardmore Prize for Best Original Script 2013.

Rockabye Baby (play) Boardmore Prize for Best Original Script 2009.

Ave Maria (play) Boardmore Prize for Best Original Script 2008. Co-written with Ken Chisholm.

All Souls’ Eve (play) Boardmore Prize for Best Original Script 2007. Co-written with Ken Chisholm.

O Night Divine (play) Boardmore Prize for Best Original Script 2005. Co-written with Ken Chisholm.

Chemical Difference (play) Best Play from another source (a short story of mine) Boardmore One-Act Play Festival 2003. Co written with Ken Chisholm.

Gambit (short story) Indigo Books contest 2nd place winner 2003

Double Double (short story) WFNS 2nd Place winner 1992

Some interesting online publications of Paul’s

The Sporting Life, my monthly column in CB Post

https://www.capebretonpost.com/lifestyles/local-lifestyles/paul-macdougall-living-among-the-mikmaq-527202/

http://www.capebretonpost.com/section/2016-01-25/article-4415095/Cycling-with-the-Italians/1

http://www.capebretonpost.com/Sports/2015-05-15/article-4147050/Sydney-Millionaires-on-Stanley-Cup-forever/1

Local history pieces

http://www.shunpiking.com/bhs/longwalk.htm

http://www.shunpiking.com/bhs/Marcus-gar.htm

Book reviews

Off the Rack

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Harry Thurston

2012 Evelyn Richardson Memorial Non-Fiction Award winner for ‘The Atlantic Coast: A Natural History’

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Heather Jessup

Heather Jessup teaches fiction in the creative writing program at Dalhousie University. She is the author of the novel The Lightning Field, and a book on truth, lies, and art called This Is Not a Hoax: Unsettling Truth in Canadian Culture. She is the co-curator of the national exhibition Make Believe: The Secret Library of M. Prud’homme – A Rare Collection of Fakes, which toured across Canada in 2019 with funding from a Canada Council New Chapter Grant. Her work has been nominated for the Journey Prize, New American Voices, two Atlantic Book Awards, and the Dublin Literary Award. She lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia on the unceded territories of Mi’kma’ki.

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Angela Mombourquette

Angela Mombourquette is the adult non-fiction editor at Nimbus Publishing, a freelance writer, and the author of 25 Years of 22 Minutes: An Unauthorized Oral History of This Hour Has 22 Minutes. She is also the co-author, with Len Wagg, of We Rise Again: More Stories of Hope and Resilience from Nova Scotia during the Covid-19 Pandemic. Both books were published by Nimbus. She has a Master of Journalism from the University of King’s College and has worked as a sessional instructor in the undergraduate journalism program there.

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Sheree Fitch

www.shereefitch.com

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Paul Zann

Paul is a versatile author: adult novel: A Real Son of a ‘Vitch; children’s books: The Aussie Six in Canada, The Aussie Six in Australia, The Aussie Six in Spain, and The Weirdest Class; book of satirical essays: You’ve Gotta be Kidding!; plays: Strike! and The Parasite/s; poetry book: Crouching at the Keyhole; numerous poems and stories in Canadian, U.S., Australian, and Spanish journals.

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Alice Burdick

Alice Burdick lives and writes poetry in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. Alice moved to Halifax in 2002 from Toronto, Ontario, where she was born and raised. She has also lived in Espanola, Vancouver, and on the Sechelt Peninsula in BC. She is a poet, essayist, and cookbook author who also edits, proofreads, does manuscript evaluations, and leads workshops for adults and children.

Burdick has been involved with the small press community in Canada since the early 1990’s, when she was co-editor, with Victor Coleman, of The Eternal Network. This very small ongoing imprint produced chapbooks, including several of her own works, such as Signs Like This, Fun Venue, and Voice of Interpreter. Her work has been published by other small presses in Canada, including: Proper Tales Press (a Time, My Lump in the Bed: Love Poems for George W. Bush); Letters Press (Covered); and BookThug (The Human About Us). It also has appeared in various magazines, such as Hava LeHaba (from Tel Aviv, Israel), Event Magazine, Canadian Poetries, Two Serious Ladies (from the US), Dig, What!magazine, subTerrain, fhole, This Magazine, and Who Torched Rancho Diablo? From 1992-1995, Alice was assistant coordinator of the Toronto Small Press Fair. She has also done numerous readings over the years in many different venues, including the VerseFest Ottawa, Ottawa International Writers Festival, The Scream in High Park in Toronto, and the Halifax Word on the Street. She co-owned the former Lexicon Books in Lunenburg from 2014 to 2020, where she organized and promoted readings and events, including Lexicon Salons, where poets and musicians collaborated.

Her sixth book of poetry, ”Ox Lost, Snow Deep” was released in Fall 2024 from Anvil Press/a feed dog books.

”Deportment”, a book of selected poems from the early 1990s onward, was released by Wilfrid Laurier University Press in the autumn of 2018. Book of Short Sentences came out in the spring of 2016 from Mansfield Press following Holler, 2012, and Flutter,2008 (both Mansfield Press). Two collaborative poems have shown up in Our Days In Vaudeville by Stuart Ross and 29 Collaborators (Mansfield Press, Fall 2013). Her poems have appeared in Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry (The Mercury Press, Fall 2005), Surreal Estate: 13 Canadian Poets Under the Influence, An Anthology of Surrealist Canadian Poetry (The Mercury Press, Fall 2004), and in Pissing Ice: An Anthology of ‘New’ Canadian Poets, (BookThug, 2004, as well as other anthologies. Her first perfect-bound book was Simple Master, published in 2002 by Pedlar Press.

Her essays have appeared in three recent anthologies: “Home” from MacIntyre Purcell, 2018, “Gush” from Frontenac House, 2018, and “Locations of Grief” from Wolsak & Wynn, 2020.

Her poem ”Terms and Conditions” was shortlisted for the first Lemon Hound Poetry Prize in 2014.

Read more about Alice Burdick in interviews conducted by Alex Porco on Open Book Toronto and on Lemon Hound and in gallery form here. You can watch and listen to Alice read some poems on a beach here.

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Julie Vandervoort

Julie Vandervoort writes creative non-fiction and memoir. She has worked with mentors Isabel Huggan (Humber School for Writers), Carol Bly and Philip Lopate (Vermont Studio Centre, creative non-fiction intensive) and David Carpenter (Sage Hill Writing Experience, advanced fiction program). She produced a piece called “Moving from Coping to Creating” at a national law conference and presented at the 2003 Canadian Conference of the Arts as part of the program “The Creativity Gap: How the Arts Inspire an Innovative Society”. In 2009, her essay “Measures” was chosen as a keynote presentation at the conference Imagining Amsterdam: Visions and Revisions. Julie has given many public readings across Canada and at PalabrArte in Mexico, served on grants juries, on the board of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia, and as associate fiction editor of The Antigonish Review. She has worked extensively in human rights law and as an environmental activist and singer with the international Gaia Project. This project coordinated the production of a double CD in 2003 (O Beautiful Gaia: Love Songs to Earth) and a 2007 CD of music inspired by the Earth Charter (My Heart is Moved).

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Steve Vernon

Steve Vernon has been writing and telling stories for over 40 years. He’s read on CBC radio, Breakfast Television, Global Noon and at schools and libraries across Canada. Steve was a great hit with the kids at the inaugural FUNNY PAGES festival at the Halifax Central Library.

He has released five ghost stories collections, one young adult novel, one children’s picture book, and one collection of historical maritime murder tales, Maritime Murder with a second collection, More Maritime Murder due out in the fall of 2022 from local publisher Nimbus.

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J.A. (Andy) Wainwright

Andrew was born in Toronto and has lived in NS since 1972. He is McCulloch Emeritus Professor in English, with a speciality in Canadian and contemporary literature. His influences include Patrick White, Lawrence Durrell, and Bob Dylan. He has received Canada Council grants for poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. He lives in Halifax with his partner Marjorie Stone.

In 2019 he won the Guernica Literary Prize for his unpublished manuscript This Cleaving and This Burning, which will be published by Guernica editions in 2020.

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