Nonfiction (adult)

Lindsey Harrington

Lindsey Harrington is a Nova Scotian writer with Newfoundland roots. Her fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry are deeply influenced by both places and her place within them. She’s a regular organizer and host of the dART Speak monthly writers’ open mic and other fun, local literary events. She’s also a professional facilitator, covering topics such as therapeutic writing, developing your personal writing strategy, performing your pieces, authors online, and ekphrasis, prompt, and response poetry.

In 2023, she was longlisted for the CBC Nonfiction Prize, shortlisted for the Fiddlehead Creative Nonfiction Prize, and received a Canada Council grant to work on her childfree memoir. She’s excited to see what 2024 brings.

Lindsey Harrington Read More »

Tina Capalbo

As a teacher, writer, mom, and life-long creative, Tina Capalbo has written everything from lesson plans, blogs, stories, and plays, to volunteer manuals, educator packs, and architectural proposals.

Tina completed her Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Education degrees at Western and her Master of Arts degree at Dalhousie. She has taught high school English and Drama in London and Halifax, English as an Additional Language in Tokyo, Toronto and Halifax, and thousands of writing classes online.

As a WITS author, Tina loves exploring stories with students and offers two workshops: (1) ‘Ari and the Very Loud Bird!’ is a workshop with early elementary students (grades P-3), featuring Ari, an upbeat, non-binary kiddo, who loves to sleep in. The workshop includes a lively reading, a visit with Ari the puppet, and a book chat. Students create a songbird, invent a bird call, and become a noisy chorus of birds. (2) ‘Main Character Energy’ is a creative nonfiction writing workshop for secondary students (grades 10-12). Students engage in life-writing, exploring elements of journaling, memoir, personal essay, personal monologue, and phase autobiography.

Tina Capalbo Read More »

Jen Colclough

Jen Colclough is a Pushcart-nominated poet, novelist, and digital artist from Nova Scotia. She is the author of the poetry collection Our Little Agonies, published in 2025 by Montreal Publishing Company. She holds a Master of Arts in Classics from Western and a Bachelor of Arts from Acadia University. Her writings have been featured in numerous publications including CRAFT Literary, Tabula Rasa Review, Porch to Porch: A Maritime Haiku Anthology, Heimat Review, ionosphere, MORIA, and Free the Verse. In 2023, her graduate research appeared in the Journal of Ancient History.

In Winter 2024, Jen Colclough held the Shannon Residency at Beinn Mhàbu in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. She is currently querying an historical fiction novel and developing a serial drama for a major streaming service.

 

Freelance editing services available.

Jen Colclough Read More »

RC Shaw

Travel Writing Workshop for Young People 

With RC Shaw

When we think of travel writing, we often conjure up tales of exotic, far-away lands. The reality is that some of the best adventures happen in our own backyards! Why not write them down?

Welcome seasoned English teacher and travel writer, RC Shaw, as he takes your students on an energetic writers’ workshop journey, from note-taking to planning to crafting a unique and personal travelogue. He will share tips and tricks from his own practice, and challenge students to write in a low-stakes series of travel-based prompts. Students will walk away with a fresh perspective on how to capture their own adventures in words.

RC Shaw has taught middle and high school English and science for over 15 years. He has experience crafting activities that meet a diverse array of curriculum outcomes, and he looks forward to tailoring his workshop to meet your students’ needs.

RC Shaw Read More »

Judie Oron

Judie Oron is a Canadian/Israeli journalist and award-winning author. Born in Montreal, she lived and worked in Israel for nearly 4 decades and now lives in Halifax, NS. After completing her BA in Anthropology at McGill University and academic research in African Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, she worked as a feature writer at The Jerusalem Post, including a 4-year stint as a weekly columnist. Her articles have appeared in Lifestyles Magazine, The Canadian Jewish News, Weekly Press Pakistan, The Jerusalem Report, Hawarya Canadian/Ethiopian Press, and the Australian editions of Christian Woman, Christian Daily.

Judie left the newspaper to recruit and direct an unofficial rescue unit that assisted Jews to find their way from Ethiopia to Israel. During that period, she returned to war-torn Ethiopia to search for a missing Ethiopian Jewish slave named Wuditu. She located the child, released her from captivity and took her into her family. Cry of the Giraffe tells the story of Wuditu’s 4 years in slavery.

“I paid cash and was handed a human being,” Judie explains, “that experience changed my life.” Since publication, Judie has been speaking out about child slavery, bride kidnapping and obstetric fistula in 2 languages and on 3 continents, in hopes of driving these tragic circumstances onto a wider public consciousness. “Wuditu was trapped into a form of slavery we would call debt bondage,” Judie reports. “My current novel in progress is focussed on another form of child slavery that is also wide-spread in Ethiopia, bride kidnapping.”

Judie Oron Read More »

Adam Foulds

I am a poet and novelist originally from the UK, now a Canadian resident. I’ve published four novels and a poetry collection and bunch of other things. I’ve won a number of literary awards, including being shortlisted for the Booker Prize. I’ve taught creative writing at workshops and universities in Britain, Canada, and elsewhere.

Adam Foulds Read More »

Heather Fegan

Heather Fegan is a freelance journalist and writer. She is a graduate of the University of King’s College School of Journalism. Heather has been a storyteller since age five, regaling her family with “updates” in her own “Heather Chronicles.” Gutsy, which explores her personal experience of navigating Crohn’s Disease over twenty-five years, is her debut book.

She lives in Halifax, NS, with her husband and two daughters. Follow her chronicles at heatherfegan.ca and @theheatherchronicles.

Heather Fegan Read More »

Lynette Richards

Lynette Richards has been cartooning as long as she can remember, and recently published her first graphic novel Call Me Bill (Conundrum Press 2022). She is a Craft Nova Scotia Master Artisan, who lives and works in Terence Bay NS, where she operates her business Rose Window Stained Glass. She chose Stained Glass as her professional medium because it was both a trade and an art that has used sequential narration for over 1000 years!

Lynette Richards Read More »

Linda Pannozzo

Linda Pannozzo is an award-winning author and freelance journalist, with a degree in Journalism from the University of King’s College in Halifax. She is the author of two books: About Canada: The Environment, explores the philosophical, economic, and ideological landscape of our current environmental worldview. She also penned the award-winning The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: An Investigation into the Scapegoating of Canada’s Grey Seal, which looked into the science and politics behind the push for a massive cull of the grey seal population on Canada’s east coast. Over the years, Linda’s articles have appeared in This magazine, The Coast, The Ottawa Citizen, The Daily News, and the The Halifax Examiner. In 2022 Linda started a subscriber-supported newsletter on Substack called The Quaking Swamp Journal, which she describes as commentary, analysis and the occasional deep dive, all in the public interest.

 

Linda Pannozzo Read More »

Scroll to Top

Experience Levels

The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS) uses the following terms to describe writers’ experience levels:

  • New writers: those with less than two years’ creative writing experience and/or no short-form publications (e.g., short stories, personal essays, or poems in literary magazines, journals, anthologies, or chapbooks).
  • Emerging writers: those with more than two years’ creative writing experience and/or numerous short-form publications.
  • Early-career authors: those with 1 or 2 book-length publications or the equivalent in book-length and short-form publications.
  • Established authors: those with 3 or 4 book-length publications.
  • Professional authors: those with 5 or more book-length publications.

Please keep in mind that each form of creative writing (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, writing for children, writing for 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.

Occasionally, WFNS uses the phrase “emerging and established writers/authors” to mean ‘writers and authors of all experience levels.’

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 info, strategies, and skills that suit their experience. 

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 uncertain about your experience level with respect to any particular workshop, please feel free to contact us at communications@writers.ns.ca