Nonfiction (adult)

Sarah Butland

Biography:

Sarah Butland is a thriving freelance writer and reporter, an author loved by enough readers to make it worthwhile and a discombobulated conundrum who loves to hear new music, tell new tales and meet new authors. The recipient of a Writers Federation of New Brunswick competition with Blood Day the Short Story, her love of writing knows no genre. With articles and book reviews published in Maritime (EDIT), AH! At Home on the North Short, Atlantic Books Today, with some work with Pictou Advocate, Butland thrives through deadlines and diversity.

As a full time employee besides, and a mother to one young book lover, Butland volunteers with the Read by the Sea Literary Festival committee, hosts local workshops and manages the Pictou County Writers – New and Experienced Facebook group, highlighting the vast amount of talent on the North Shore.

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Wanda Baxter

Wanda Baxter lives on an old farmstead in Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia, with her long-time partner, Randy, their gregarious cat George, and an ever-changing assortment of wildlife. Wanda has Masters degrees in English (with Creative Writing) and Environmental Design, and she works primarily for environmental non-profit organizations. She is also an organic gardener, a ground bee and Monarch butterfly guardian, an amateur musician and country road rollerblader.

Wanda’s much-loved book If I had an Old House on the East Coast, illustrated beautifully by Kat Frick Miller, is in its 4th printing. Her brand new book She is Hope for Wildlife is based on the life and work of Hope Swinimer, the founder and director of the wildlife rescue Hope for Wildlife. An inspiring young reader for ages 6 – 11 and illustrated by Leah Boudreau, She is Hope for Wildlife is available in stores and via the wildlife rescue’s online store as of October, 2024. She is Hope for Wildlife is published by Nimbus Publishing, and a portion of the profit goes to Hope for Wildlife.

https://nimbus.ca/store/she-is-hope-for-wildlife.html

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Anne Lévesque

Anne Lévesque’s poetry, essays and fiction have appeared in Canadian and international journals and anthologies. She is the author of the novels ‘Lucy Cloud’ (Pottersfield Press 2018) and ‘The Secret Lives of Public Servants’ (Galleon Books 2025). She lives on the west coast of Unama’ki – Cape Breton Island.

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Laura Churchill Duke

Laura is a communication specialist and journalist in the Annapolis Valley. She is currently teaching communication to first year kinesiology students at Acadia University, focusing on writing, research and presentation skills.

Laura is also a freelance journalist for Saltwire Network, writing stories for Atlantic Canada. Her writing also appears in the Acadia Alumni Bulletin. She can also be heard as the Kentville community contact on CBC Radio, Information Morning.

Laura regularly teaches a creative non-fiction writing workshop to middle school students in the Annapolis Valley. Through this, she teaches students how to research, and then how to bring historical figures to life through creative writing.

As a public relation specialist, Laura works with Campaign for Kids, helps to raise funds for youth in financial need in Kings County. Their signature event, which Laura organizes, is Burger Wars.

She is the founder and creator of ValleyFamilyFun.ca, a website and blog dedicated to helping families find fun things to do together.

When not writing, Laura is working as a team member with Your Last Resort as a professional organizer, helping people to clear the clutter, making positive changes in their lives.

Laura lives in Kentville with her husband, David (a history professor at Acadia University), two sons (Daniel & Thomas) and 4 pets. She loves to travel and hike and is always up for an adventure!

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Allison LaSorda

Allison LaSorda’s writing has been nominated for National Magazine Awards and the CBC Poetry Prize, and selected as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2021. A recipient of scholarships from the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and the Vermont Studio Center residencies, she is a contributing editor at Brick, A Literary Journal. Her work has appeared in Literary Hub, The New Quarterly, The Malahat Review, Scientific American, The Walrus, CNQ, The Globe and Mail, Southern Humanities Review, Hazlitt, and other venues. Allison lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

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Angus MacCaull

Angus MacCaull is a Canadian journalist and poet with work in Newsweek, Maclean’s, Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, The Walrus and more. He is also the author of three picture books for children. A longtime resident of Nova Scotia, he now lives with his young family in Toronto.

Angus is currently working on Ghost Tones, a memoir about mental health, music, and loss. The book tracks the various therapies, mindfulness practices, and drugs he took over a ten-year period after being told at sixteen that he could be one of the best clarinetists in the world—but then losing music due to tinnitus.

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Nicole Spence

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Bruce W. Bishop

Bruce Bishop, originally from Yarmouth, N.S., has been writing professionally since the mid-1990s, primarily for travel, tourism and leisure freelance markets. He has written and contributed to several guidebook companies over the years, especially Fodor’s, Michelin, and DK Eyewitness Guides. From 2000 to 2002, he was the elected president of the Travel Media Association of Canada.

In 2020 at the outset of the pandemic, he decided to begin writing fiction for the first time, and his debut novel Unconventional Daughters (Icarus Press) was published the same year. Based on its popular appeal, he chose to embark upon writing a trilogy, and the second novel, Uncommon Sons, was released in 2021. The final novel in the trilogy, Undeniable Relations was published in December 2022.

He was one of five authors selected to read from his last novel at the Read by the Sea annual literary festival in July 2023.

Besides memberships in the Writers Union of Canada and Screen Nova Scotia, Bishop is proud to be associated with the WFNS and hopes to meet many likeminded writers (emerging, intermediate and established) in the future!

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Joseph Howse

Joseph Howse writes fiction and poetry, as well as technical books on computer programming and image analysis. He lives in a Nova Scotian fishing village, where he chats with his cats and nurtures an orchard of hardy fruit trees.

Joseph’s debut novel, The Girl in the Water, has won the 2023 Independent Press Award for Literary Fiction and the 2023 IAN Book of the Year Awards for Outstanding Multicultural Fiction. He is currently working on the sequel, The Circus and the Atom. These novels are the start of a multigenerational saga called Next Year’s Snow, which hinges on the friendship and strife of two families in the Soviet/post-Soviet world.

Some of Joseph’s latest work is published or forthcoming in Litbreak Magazine, Humana Obscura, paint me (37th Anthology of the New Zealand Poetry Society), Haiku Canada Review, and The Poetry Lighthouse Anthology (Volume II).

Joseph has experience doing business, volunteer work, and speaking engagements on six continents. He has won several awards from Bpeace (a pro bono consulting group) for his work on business mentorship projects in El Salvador and Guatemala.

As a graduate of Dalhousie University, Joseph holds a BA in French, MBA in International Business, MA in International Development Studies, and Master of Computer Science.

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Sharon English

Sharon English is the author of the newly released novel Night in the World (Freehand Books), as well as two collections of short stories, Uncomfortably Numb and Zero Gravity. Zero Gravity was longlisted for the Giller Prize and ReLit Award, included in the Globe & Mail‘s Top 100 titles for the year, and recently translated into Serbian. Night in the World has been described as “a splendid and searing novel, pressed up against the tremours of our times.”

Sharon’s stories and essays have also appeared in numerous journals, including Best Canadian Stories, Canadian Notes & Queries, and Dark Mountain in Britain. She was guest co-editor of the Winter 2020 special issue of CNQ, “Writing in an Age of Unravelling,” which featured writing that responds to ecological crisis.

Originally from London, ON, for over 20 years Sharon lived in Toronto and taught creative writing at Innis College, University of Toronto, where she now serves as part-time Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, in the Writing & Rhetoric program. A research team member of the Persephone Project, Sharon has been dedicated to re-imagining our relationship to home in the context of ecological and social crisis, and to pursuing writing and storytelling that aligns with the natural world. Her courses involve workshop-based and experiential learning.

Sharon has split her time between Toronto and Nova Scotia for years, and moved with her family in 2021 to an old farm on the Shubenacadie River.

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