Nonfiction (adult)

Joyce Grant-Smith

Joyce Grant-Smith was born in Annapolis Royal and has spent most of her life in the beautiful Annapolis Valley. She took her B.A. and B.Ed. at Acadia University. She has enjoyed teaching in elementary and middle schools for many years; so many years, in fact, that she’s frequently taught the children of former students. She and her husband, Les, have been married for over thirty years. They have raised two children, Jesse and Alexis, and a large menagerie of animals.

Joyce remembers writing as a small child, composing little notes and poems for family members. Her love for writing grew as she did and she delighted in learning to hone her craft. As an adult author, she has derived special satisfaction from writing for young readers.

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Alison DeLory

Alison DeLory is a writer, editor, teacher, and communications professional. She is currently the Associate Director, Writing & Publishing with the University of King’s College’s MFA program. Prior to this she was Director, Advancement Communications with Dalhousie University (2020 – 2026).

Books

Author, Making it Home, Nimbus Publishing (2019) (Finalist for Rakuten/Kobo Emerging Writer Prize) (novel)
Author, Scotia Sinker, Sketch Publishing (2015) (early chapter book)
Anthology contributor, Becoming Fierce: Teen Stories IRL, Fierce Ink (2014) (young adult)
Author, Lunar Lifter, Bryler Publishing (2012) (early chapter book)
Managing Editor, Take as Directed, ECW Press (2010) (nonfiction adult)

Magazines

Editor, Dal Magazine (2025 – 2026); editorial panel, Dal Magazine (2021 – 2026)
Editor, Tidings, University of King’s College (2018 – 2020)
Editor, Folia Montana, Mount Saint Vincent University (2011 – 2014)
Atlantic Canada Correspondent, Chatelaine Magazine (2009 – 2011)
Associate Editor, The Medical Post (2001 – 2007)

Teaching Experience

University of King’s College, 8-week non-credit writing workshops

Organizational Storytelling (2025)
Fiction Fundamentals (2021)

Mount Saint Vincent University, credit courses in Communication Studies (2013 – 2019)

Persuasive Writing
Strategic Writing
Intro to Writing and Editing
Creative Nonfiction
Mass Media and Public Opinion

Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC) (2016 – 2017)

Media Literacy

Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia

Creative Nonfiction workshop (2016)
The Braided Essay workshop (2015)

Writers in the Schools (WITS)

Classroom visits grads primary to 9 (2010 – 2018)

Selected Writing Samples

Quickening the pulse of biomedical innovation, Dal Magazine (2026)
International rights scholar says look at history to understand our political present, Dal News (2024)
Cindy Blackstock: Indigenous children are worth fighting for, Dal News (2022)
For me, Sable Island feels like another dimension, CBC (2017)
Finding beauty in unexpected places after my friend’s death, Globe and Mail (2016)

Judge

Evelyn Richardson Nonfiction Award, Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (2017)
CBC Creative Nonfiction Prize (2016)

Education
MPR (MSVU), BPR (MSVU), BAA in Journalism (TMU), Leadership Badge (Dalhousie)

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Marq de Villiers

MARQ DE VILLIERS is a veteran journalist who has reported from many parts of the world, especially Africa and the former Soviet Union. He has also been editor, and then publisher, of Toronto Life magazine, Toronto, and editorial director of WHERE Magazines International, Los Angeles. De Villiers was born in South Africa and is a graduate of the University of Cape Town with a later graduate year at the London School of Economics. He holds an honorary degree from Dalhousie University and in 2010 was appointed to the Order of Canada. He lives in Eagle Head, on Nova Scotia’s south shore. He is the author of 14 books, most on African themes or natural history, but one on wine (The Heartbreak Grape) and one on the American revolutionary wars, Blood Traitors. Five of his books were co-authored with Sheila Hirtle. He has won several awards, including the Governor General’s Award for Non Fiction, the Evelyn Richardson Award (twice), South Africa’s Alan Paton Award, and was shortlisted for both the Julia Child and James Beard Awards. He has also written on contract for National Geographic Books (America’s Outdoors: Eastern Canada) and has ghosted three other titles, the “autobiographies” of Maurice Strong, who headed the 1992 world environmental summit in Rio; of Lawrencia “Bambi” Bembenek (written as she was about to get her murder conviction overturned); and of former theatre impresario and later felon Garth Drabinsky. His latest book is Hell and Damnation: A Sinner’s Guide to Eternal Torment, published by University of Regina Press in 2019.

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Pamela Ditchoff

Pamela Ditchoff was born in Lansing, Michigan on September 21, 1950. She received a BA in Communication Arts from Michigan State University (1982), and an MA in English/Creative Writing from Michigan State University (1985). In the mid-1980s, Ditchoff worked at WFSL-TV47 in Lansing as head copywriter/creative consultant and then as a Graduate Teaching Assistant at Michigan State University.During this period, her early fiction and poetry was published in various literary magazines. She taught in elementary and secondary schools with the Writer’s In Schools program, and Interact Press published two of her texts for teachers. In 1993, Ditchoff was recognized in Who’s Who in Writers, Editors & Poets: United States & Canada, 1992-1993 for her significant literary contributions. Ditchoff moved to Liverpool in 2006, and has conducted classes there with WFNS and SCANS.

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Deirdre Dwyer

Deirdre Dwyer has been writing poetry since her teacher taught her about haiku in grade six. In the meantime, she’s worked as an English as a Second Language teacher in Tokyo, a Creative Writing instructor in Halifax, a Sessional Instructor of English in Windsor and a bookseller. Deirdre holds an MA in English and Creative Writing from the University of Windsor, and was a founding member of the Bourbon Street Poetry Society. She has worked with the Hope for Wildlife Society, a wildlife rehabilitation facility on the Eastern Shore. Deirdre was also Coordinator of the Musquodoboit Harbour Farmers’ Market. She was chair of the Musquodoboit Harbour and Area Community Association, and has been writing prose about her three years in Japan and her subsequent travels; and a writing workshop in Iceland in 2019.

When she visits schools, she can talk about the differences between Japanese culture, discuss Nova Scotian wildlife, show pictures of some of the wildlife she met at Hope for Wildlife, do writing exercises relating to either prose or poetry connected to these discussions, and read and discuss her own work with the students. She can also discuss life in Iceland, publishing books and in journals.

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Sarah Emsley

Sarah Emsley’s debut novel, The Austens (Pottersfield, 2025) brings to life the story of Jane Austen’s friendship with her sister-in-law Fanny Austen, who lived in Halifax, Nova Scotia with her naval captain husband during the years when Jane was writing Pride and Prejudice and other novels that would eventually make her famous. Sarah is also the author of Jane Austen’s Philosophy of the Virtues (Palgrave, 2005) and a history of St. Paul’s in the Grand Parade (Formac, 1999), the church in Halifax where Jane Austen’s niece Cassy was baptized in 1809.

Sarah has hosted several blog series celebrations of Austen’s work at www.sarahemsley.com, and she edited a collection of essays on Jane Austen and the North Atlantic for the Jane Austen Society (2006). She received her PhD from Dalhousie University, held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford, taught classes on Austen in the Writing Program at Harvard University, and now lives in Halifax with her family.

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Sally Erskine Doucette

Sally Erskine Doucette works as a freelance writer, and researcher from her home overlooking the Dartmouth Lakes. She writes non-fiction articles for periodicals, and her work has appeared in several publications, including The Chronicle Herald, The Atlantic Co-operator, Kentville Advertiser, Dartmouth-Cole Harbour Weekly News, and A Needle Pulling Thread. Sally writes extensively for non-profit sector clients, including Nova Scotia Designer Craft Council and Community Action on Homelessness. In 2008, she wrote an essay about Donald Marshall Sr., grand chief of Eastern Canada’s Mi’kMaq Nation for a textbook on Native Leaders of Canada.

Sally writes stories about life in Nova Scotia for the general public. She writes on a variety of subjects, and has many years of experience writing about housing issues and homelessness, cultural heritage, and hand-made fine craft.

Sally edits and writes (voluntary) for The Clothes Press, newsletter of the Costume Society of Nova Scotia. She educates the public through publications and presentations about historical dress of this province.

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Cindy Etter-Turnbull

Cindy Etter-Turnbull was born on November 24th, 1960 in Windsor Nova Scotia. After growing up in the village of Brooklyn, Hants County and educated in the West Hants school system, Cindy went on to further her university education at Mount Saint Vincent and Acadia. This was interrupted when the first of her two sons came along. With this new focus on raising her own young family, Cindy also started what turned out to be a twenty year career mentoring mentally challenged adults, both very rewarding jobs.

After a brief retirement, Cindy unexpectedly found herself writing her first book. Her outgoing personality, keen sense of humour, creativity and determination led to Fine Lines, a celebration of clothesline culture. A natural letter writer, avid gardener, and feisty fisherperson, Cindy also enjoys crewel embroidery, home decorating (or moving furniture all the time!) and community volunteer work. She is currently working on a play and a children’s book.

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Greg Cook

Gregory M. Cook was born in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. As one of three poets in his immediate family, he has made writers and their survival a personal and a professional study. His biography of his close friend of twenty years, One Heart, One Way/ Alden Nowlan: A Writer’s Life, was undertaken following a two-year appointment as writer-in-residence at the University of Waterloo. More recently he has lived in Toronto, Fredericton, and Saint John, New Brunswick, where he is writing a biography of his friend, novelist Ernest Buckler (1908-1984).

Cook has read from his works in schools and universities in all Canadian provinces, and the Yukon where he was in residence at Berton House Writers’ Retreat – as well as in Maine and Georgia, USA; England; the Netherlands; and Germany. He is a member of Writers’ Union of Canada, The League of Canadian Poets and the Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick, and an honourary member of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia.

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Wayne Curtis

Wayne Curtis was born near Blackville, New Brunswick in 1943. He was educated at the local schoolhouse and St. Thomas University, majoring in English. He started writing prose in the late sixties. His work has been described by Books in Canada as “a pleasure to read, for no detail escapes his discerning eye.”

He has been a contributor to several newspapers including The National Post and The Globe and Mail, as well as commercial magazines; Quill and Quire, Outdoor Canada, Fly Fishermen, Atlantic Insight, The Atlantic Advocate, The Atlantic Salmon Journal and The New Brunswick Reader. Winner of the David Adams Richards and George Woodcock awards, Wayne’s stories have appeared in literary journals: The Cormorant, Pottersfield Portfolio, Nashwaak Review, Antigonish Review, Origins, Atlantica and New Maritimes. His short stories have been dramatized for CBC Radio and CBC Television. In the spring of 2005 he recieved an Honorary Doctrine Degree (letters) from St. Thomas University. Wayne Curtis has lived in Southern Ontario with stints in Cuba nad the Yukon. He now divides his time between his cabin on the Miramichi and the city of Fredericton.

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