Nonfiction (adult)

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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Gwen Davies

Gwen Davies writes short stories and novels and the occasional essay. In 2000 she founded the acclaimed writing retreat Community of Writers, a summer retreat at the Tatamagouche Centre. She teaches creative writing at the Nova Scotia Community College and in private workshops and retreats, and particularly enjoys working with new writers. She earns a living as a consultant in clear language and design, and boosts her spirit doing parkour — check out this video on Halifax parkour [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEZLdVbD56E].

Gwen grew up as an Air Force Brat, moving with her strange and interesting family around Ontario and France and exploring Europe with them in a VW camper. She graduated from Wilfird Laurier with a BA Honours in English and later from King’s with a BJ and holds an Adult Education Certificate from the Tatamagouche Centre. Over the years she has taught high school English, worked with health food, written stories for magazines and newspapers including The Globe and Mail, and worked in community development and various types of consulting. For many years, she earned her living editing public materials (like the NS Power Bill and the Youth Criminal Justice Act) into language that was clear and accessible to its intended audience.

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Lynn Davies

Lynn is the author of three collections of poetry. Her poems have been featured on CBC radio and translated into French and Spanish. Lynn’s poems and stories for children have appeared in anthologies and magazines. Her essays, reviews, and freelance pieces have been published in many magazines and journals.

Lynn was born in Moncton, New Brunswick. She lived in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia for 18 years, and now lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick, where she works part time at Westminster Books. She’s taught creative writing through Continuing Education in Halifax and Fredericton, at the Maritime Writers’ Workshop, and at the University of New Brunswick. She has served on the WFNS and WFNB executive boards.

For more information about Lynn, her books, and author visits, please visit www.lynndavies.ca or e-mail Lynn at lynn@lynndavies.ca

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Alison DeLory

Alison DeLory is a writer, editor, publisher, teacher, and consultant in Halifax.

She’s the author of an adult novel called Making it Home (Vagrant/Nimbus Publishing, 2019); two children’s chapter books called Lunar Lifter (Bryler Publications, 2012) and Scotia Sinker (Sketch Publishing, 2015), and a story in the YA creative non-fiction anthology Becoming Fierce: Teen Stories IRL (Fierce Ink, 2014).

Alison has written news, feature stories and essays for publications including The Globe and Mail, Chicago Tribune, Chatelaine, Today’s Parent, Ryerson Magazine, Dalhousie Magazine, Medical Post, Halifax Magazine, and Canadian Traveler.

Alison was a finalist twice in the Atlantic Writing Competition and won prizes for her blog and poetry at Mount Saint Vincent University. She served as a judge for the 2017 Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award and as a reader for the 2016 CBC Creative Nonfiction Prize. She’s been a presenting author twice at Word on the Street Halifax (2015 and 2019).

She has two degrees from Mount Saint Vincent University including a masters of public relations, and was editor of the alumni magazine Folia Montana there for four years. Her third degree is from Ryerson University in journalism.

Alison has been a part-time instructor at Mount Saint Vincent University in communication studies since 2013. She’s also taught at the Nova Scotia Community College and taught workshops through the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS). She participated in the WFNS Writers In The Schools program from 2009 to 2017, bringing writing workshops into more than 50 classrooms province-wide. Alison has served as council member at the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS) since 2009.

Alison enjoys working with emerging authors on their manuscripts, and also performs substantive, structural and copy-editing for various clients including creative writers, business writers, and academics.

She is currently the Associate Director of Communications for the University of King’s College where she writes content for print and digital publications, and is editor of the alumni newsletter and Tidings Magazine.

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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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