Andria Hill-Lehr is a freelance writer and author of two non-fiction books: Mona Parsons: From Privilege to Prison, from Nova Scotia to Nazi Europe (Nimbus Publishing 2017) and A Mother’s Road to Kandahar (Pottersfield 2008). She is an entertaining public speaker who enjoys storytelling.
Martine Jacquot is a prolific writer who writes in French but can make presentations in either French or English. She has published over 30 books so far (novels, poetry, short-stories, essays and novels for young readers).
She has been invited to many literary events across Canada and abroad, namely to Lafayette’s book festival during the 2nd World Acadian Congress in 1999, to Tunisia to attend a panel of women writers in 2000, the International Poetry Festival in Trois-Rivières, the Northrop Frye International Literary Festival and to the Paris Book Fair in 2004 and 2006.
She did several reading tours: Tunisia in 2000, Russia and Cameroon in 2008, Morocco in 2010, Roumania in 2011, India in 2012.
She holds several degrees: BA from La Sorbonne, Paris, 3 MA degrees from La Sorbonne, Acadia and Dalhousie, a BJ from the University of Kings College and a PHD from Dalhousie University. She has studied and lived in France, England, Switzerland and Canada.
Past Vice President of the Association des Écrivains Acadiens, past president of the Conseil Culturel Acadien de la Nouvelle-Écosse, she has been on many editorial committees, member of several juries, has received creation grants and travel grants both from the Canada Council for the arts and the NS Arts Council. Her novel Les oiseaux de nuit finissent aussi par s’endormir was short listed for the Antonine-Maillet-Acadie Vie award. She was thrice finalist for the Éloizes awards, once as a writer, and twice as a cultural journalist. She was shortlisted for the France-Acadie Award three times for Au Gré du Vent (2006), Le jardin d’herbes aromatiques (2006) and Le silence de la neige (2008). She won the Award Prix Européen de l’ADELF with a special mention 2007 for Au gré du vent. She has also been chosen on 2 occasions to advise beginning authors, once by the Talent Trust of NS, once by the Association des auteurs de l’Ontario. Some of her poems and short stories have been broadcast on SRC. One of her stories was staged in Ottawa at the Théâtre Trillium. She was a member of the Board of Governors of the NS Museum for 12 years and an author in residence with the ArtsInfusion program and Fecane program
Her articles and interviews have appeared in LittéRéalité, Ancrage, Arcade, Alpha Arts magazine, Eloizes, Femmes d’Action, The Fiddlehead, Liason, Studies in Canadian Literature, Vent’d’est, Waves, Ashtarowt and Al Quds, among others. Her poems and short stories have appeared in Concerto pour huit voix, La Diversité: 15 nouvelles francophones á travers le monde, Ecphore Anthology 1987, Eloizes, Les Elytres du Hanneton, Herspectives, Liaison, Lieux d’être, Littéréalité, Les Maritimes, Mensuel, 25 Offerta Speziale, Poetry Halifax-Dartmouth, The Pottersfield Portfolio, Reflets Maritimes 2, Voices and Echoes: Stories and Poems of Women’s Spirituality, Walk through Paradise, La Poésie acadienne and Pour l’Amour de toi, among others. Some of her work is being translated into English, Russian, Portugese, Italian, Basque and Arabic.
Dean Jobb is a true crime writer, book reviewer and a professor in the School of Journalism at the University of King’s College in Halifax, and a member of the faculty of the university’s MFA in Creatiive Nonfiction program.
He is the author of seven books. His latest, Empire of Deception, tells the stranger-than-fiction story of master swindler Leo Koretz, who hoodwinked the elite of 1920s Chicago before escaping to a new life of luxury and excess in Nova Scotia. It won the Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis Award, was named the Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year and was a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction. His previous books won the Evelyn Richardson and City of Dartmouth awards for nonfiction, and he was runner up for the National Business Book Award.
Dean writes a monthy column on true crime for Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and is a contributing reviewer to the Chicago Review of Books. His articles, commentaries and reviews have appeared in The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, National Post and Winnipeg Free Press. He also has written for numerous magazines, including Canada’s History, Canadian Lawyer and the Literary Review of Canada, and has been published in the Chicago Tribune, The Scotsman, The Irish Times and the Belfast Telegraph.
A reporter, editor and columnist during a 20-year career at The Chronicle Herald, Dean is a three-time winner of the Atlantic Journalism Award and a finalist for the National Newspaper and National Magazine awards.
Originally from Kingston, Ont., K.V. Johansen studied English and History at Mount Allison, received a Master’s in Medieval Studies from the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto, and another Master’s in English, from McMaster. She writes mostly epic fantasy, as well as fantasy and science fiction for young readers; she has also written short stories and literary criticism for adults. Ancient and Medieval history and languages are one of her main interests. Johansen taught workshops at the spring 2010 MASC Young Authors and Illustrators Conference in Ottawa. She has worked with the elementary or elementary/intermediate sessions of Writers in Electronic Residence (WIER) over a number of terms and has visited schools from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario, to Austria and Macedonia. She has in the past written a large number of articles for the Nova Scotia based farm magazines Rural Delivery and Atlantic Beef Quarterly, as well as other non-fiction. She was the editor of Stalin Versus Me, the final volume of the late Donald Jack’s triple Leacock-Award-winning Bandy Papers series (Sybertooth 2005). Johansen currently lives in Sackville, NB.
A.J.B. (John) Johnston is the author or co-author of books and museum exhibits, as well as articles in scholarly journals, magazines and newspapers. He was made a chevalier of France’s Ordre des Palmes Académiques in recognition of his body of work on Louisbourg and other French colonial topics. The best known of his history books is Endgame 1758, which won a Clio award from the Canadian Historical Assocation and was short-listed for the Dartmouth Book Award.
His two latest books, his 20th and 21st, will appear in 2020. First up will be Kings of Friday Night: The Lincolns (Nimbus). Then it will be Ancient World, New World: Skmaqn—Port-la-Joye—Fort Amherst (Acorn), co-authored with Jesse Francis.
In 2018, John released The Hat, a YA novel that offers a 21st-century take on the Acadian Deportation, and Something True, which was inspired by the real-life adventures of Katharine McLennan in late 19th and early 20th-century Cape Breton and in France during the First World War.
In 2017, he was Writer-in-Residence at the Center for the Writing Arts in Fairhope, Alabama. Back in 2016, John participated as a mentor to emerging writer Linda MacLean in the Alistair MacLeod Mentorship Program. From mid-April to mid-May 2017 he combined with Sal Sawler and Norma Jean MacPhee to offer sessions for the WFNS entitled “So You Want to be Published” in Halifax, Antigonish, Wolfville, Sydney and Yarmouth.
John has written three novels in the Thomas Pichon series: Thomas, A Secret Life in 2012; The Maze in 2114 and Crossings in 2015.
Back in 2013, Ni’n na L’nu: The Mi’kmaq of Prince Edward Island (Acorn), won three awards: “best-published Atlantic Book”, best PEI Non-Fiction, and a PEI Heritage Award. The French version of the book, Ni’n na L’nu: Les Mi’kmaq de l’Ile-de-Prince-Édouard, is now available from La Grand Marée (Tracadie Sheila, NB).
Released in 2015 was Grand Pré, Landscape for the World (Nimbus), co-written with Ronnie-Gilles LeBlanc.
Most of his books are available as e-books.
John writes exhibits as well, including the “Vanguard: 150 Years of Remarkable Nova Scotians” for the Nova Scotia Museum and the ground floor of the Black Cultural Centre. The award-winning travelling exhibition Ni’n na L’nu: The Mi’kmaq of Prince Edward Island opened at the Confederation Centre in Charlottetown and then travelled to the Museum of Canadian History in Gatienau, Quebec and other subsequent venues. More recently, John developed the storyline and texts for the revitalization of the Colchester Historeum in Truro. That exhibit opened officially in early 2016.
More information on John can be found at ajbjohnston.com and on Facebook at A J B Johnston, Writer. John is on Twitter at @ajbjohnston and on Instagram at AJBJohnston.
John donates his papers to the Beaton Institute of the Cape Breton University.
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STEPHEN KIMBER is an award-winning writer, editor and broadcaster. He is the author of 13 books, including two novels and nine works of nonfiction:
His What Lies Across the Water: The Real Story of the Cuban Five, is a narrative nonfiction account of Cuban intelligence agents arrested in Florida in 1998 and sentenced to long terms in prison in the United States. Following its publication, Kimber toured extensively in the United States and Canada to discuss the book and the case, including meeting with members of the U.S. Congress and officials at the State Department. On December 17, 2014, the three members of the Cuban Five still in prison were released as part of an historic rapprochement between the U.S. and Cuba. Cuban officials have said Kimber’s book played a significant role in winning freedom for the Five.
Kimber’s journalism has appeared in almost all major Canadian publications including Canadian Geographic, Financial Post Magazine, Report on Business Magazine, The Literary Review of Canada, Maclean’s, Canadian Business, En Route, Chatelaine, Financial Times, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and National Post, as well as internationally in the Washington Post, Counterpunch, Progreso Weekly and the Huffington Post. For 16 years, he was a political and general interest columnist for the Daily News in Halifax.
He is currently a weekly columnist for The Halifax Examiner and a Contributing Editor for Atlantic Business Magazine.
As a broadcaster, he has been an Ottawa-based current affairs producer for the CTV Television Network and a producer, writer, story editor and host for numerous CBC television and radio programs. His work has appeared on national programs ranging from television’s Rough Cuts to radio’s Sunday Morning.
He has also produced a number of commissioned works, including Net Profits; The Report of the Royal Commission on the Donald Marshall, Jr. Prosecution; IWK: A Century of Caring; and 150 Years in the History of a Law Firm (McInnes Cooper). Awards:
What Lies was long-listed for a Libris Award for the Best Nonfiction Book published in Canada in 2013 and won the Evelyn Richardson Award for Nonfiction at the 2014 East Coast Literary Awards. In 2016, the Spanish translation of the book won the Readers’ Choice Award from the Cuban Institute of the Book as one of that year’s 10 best-selling books in Cuba. The book has also been translated into German and Serbian editions.
Sailors, Slackers, and Blind Pigs, a look at life in Halifax during World War II, won the Evelyn Richardson Nonfiction Prize, the Dartmouth Book Award for Nonfiction and a Torgi Award, and was a finalist for the Atlantic Booksellers’ Choice Award.
Loyalists and Layabouts was short-listed for both the 2009 Dartmouth Book Award for Nonfiction and the Edith Richardson Nonfiction Prize. His novel Reparations was short-listed for the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction and the Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel.
He has also won:
Since 1983, he has taught journalism at the University of King’s College, where he specializes in creative nonfiction, and co-founded the university’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction program in 2013. From 1996 to 2003, in 2007-08 and again in 2013-14, he served as Director of the School of Journalism.
In 1998-99, he was selected as a Research Fellow with the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, Florida.
In 2001, he completed a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction degree at Goucher College in Baltimore, MD.
He and his wife, former film and television costume designer and wardrobe consultant Jeanie Kimber, live in Halifax. They have three grown children.
Carolyn Rose Gimian has made her home in Nova Scotia since 1986. A freelance writer and editor of nonfiction, Carolyn has been published in both magazines and books, including The Best Buddhist Writing 2006, 2007 and 2008; Finding Your Inner Mama: Women Reflect on the Challenges and Rewards of Motherhood; and The Shambhala Sun, Inquiring Mind and other periodicals. In 2008, she co-authored Dragon Thunder: My Life with Chogyam Trungpa with Diana J. Mukpo. This memoir by the widow of a well-known North American Buddhist teacher received critical praise from the international Buddhist press.
Carolyn is a senior editor of the work of Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa [1939-1987], and in that capacity, she has written hundreds of pages of biographical and textual commentary, which is included in his books. She is the editor of the eight volume Collected Works of Chogyam Trungpa, as well as Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior and many other titles. In 2009, two posthumous books by Chogyam Trungpa that Carolyn edited are being published for the first time: Mishap Lineage: Transforming Confusion into Wisdom and Smile at Fear: Awakening the True Heart of Bravery.
Carolyn is the director emeritus of the Shambhala Archives, an institution she helped to establish as a repository for the archival records of many Buddhist teachers in North America. She is a past president of the Council of Nova Scotia Archives and retains an interest in all things archival, with emphasis on the archiving of audio-visual records.
Carolyn’s areas of writing interest include: publishing; biography and memoir; Eastern religion and Buddhism; book reviews; story editing for television and film; archives, conservation and information technology, especially for audio visual records; magazine interviews and profiles, and Atlantic Canadian stories. Carolyn is particularly interested in working with memoir as a vehicle to help people communicate their unique stories and insights. She also enjoys reviewing manuscripts, helping aspiring and seasoned writers to improve their writing skills, and assisting writers in formulating proposals for publications. Her media skills include: copy writing and copy editing, grant and report writing, press releases, publicity and promotion.
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Joyce studied silversmithing at the New Brunswick school of Craft and Design before going on to earn her BA, with honours in English, from Saint Mary’s University. She is a Halifax-based freelance writer, editor and the author of four non-fiction books including The Halifax Explosion: Surviving the Blast that Shook a Nation (Altitude 2003), The Halifax Explosion: Heroes and Survivors (James Lorimer and Company 2011) and Pirates and Privateers: Swashbuckling Stories of the East Coast (James Lorimer and Company 2013). Her creative non-fiction has been included in the anthologies Holiday Misadventures: Tragedy, Murder and Mystery (Altitude 2006), Country Roads: Memoirs from Rural Canada (Nimbus 2010) and Still Point Arts Quarterly (July 2011). Her cover stories, profiles, travel articles and reviews have appeared in regional, national and international publications such as Atlantic Books Today, Canadian Gardening, Canadian Geographic, East Coast Gardener, Harrowsmith Country Life, Lifestyle Nova Scotia, Oferta de Viajes, The Beaver: Canada’s History Magazine, The Coast, The Chronicle Herald and The New Brunswick Reader, among others. Joyce’s interests include art, architecture, fine craft, history, photography, nature, the environment, and travel.
Sue Goyette lives in Halifax and has published four books of poems, The True Names of Birds, Undone and outskirts from Brick Books, and Ocean, published by Gaspereau Press in April 2013. Her novel, Lures (HarperCollins), was published in 2002.
Sue has been nominated for several awards including the Governor General’s Award for Poetry, the Pat Lowther, the Gerald Lampert, the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, the Dartmouth Book Award and the Acorn-Plantos Award for People’s Poetry. Selections of her work won the 2008 CBC Literary Prize for Poetry, the 2010 Earle Birney Award and the 2011 Bliss Carman Poetry Award. She is the recipient of a Nova Scotia Established Artist Award as well as the Pat Lowther and Atlantic Poetry Awards.
Her poetry has appeared on the Toronto subway system, in wedding vows and spray-painted on a sidewalk somewhere in St. John, New Brunswick. Sue has taught at the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Sage Hill Experience and currently teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Dalhousie University.
Monica Graham is the author of several non-fiction books. Her newest, Senior Moment (Nimbus), an almost-humorous account of finding residential care for her aging mother, came out in the spring of 2021. In the Spirit, Reflections on Everyday Grace, is a collection of some of the best columns she wrote over eight years for the Chronicle Herald religion page. Cradle of Knowledge: Pictou Academy 1816-2016 tells the history of the 200-year-old school. A columnist as well as a freelance journalist and photographer, Monica has had her work published by the Halifax Chronicle Herald, Rural Delivery, Atlantic Business Magazine, The Pictou Advocate, Canadian Living, Trident, The Atlantic Fisherman, and other publications. She is a member of the Writers in the Schools program, and also presents writing and storytelling workshops for adults and literacy groups. Monica served as writer-in-residence at Pictou Antigonish Regional Library in 2011-12; and at Berton House in Dawson City, YT, in 2008. She lives in the woods in Pictou County, NS, with her husband, a dog, and visiting bears, deer and people. between She is working on an historical novel and a collection of short stories.
The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS) uses the following terms to describe writers’ experience levels:
Please keep in mind that each form of creative writing (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, writing for children and young adults, and others) provides you with a unique set of experiences and skills, so you might consider yourself an ‘established author’ in one form but a ‘new writer’ in another.
The “Recommended experience level” section of each workshop description refers to the above definitions. A workshop’s participants should usually have similar levels of creative writing and / or publication experience. This ensures that each participant gets value from the workshop and is presented with information, strategies, and skills that suit their career stage.
For “intensive” and “masterclass” workshops, which provide more opportunities for peer-to-peer feedback, the recommended experience level should be followed closely.
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
